Small School XC Nationals (High School)

Great idea, but the date is too early. California state meet is a week later. Wish this meet was being held in early Dec.

Wise Old Man wrote:

Great idea, but the date is too early. California state meet is a week later. Wish this meet was being held in early Dec.

Meh. California should move the date of the state meet forward to match the rest of the country.

New YOrk's Federation meet is the same week, I believe.

The date is an exercise in compromise. Nope, California schools can't come. California's calendar creates a lot of problems. Not everything can be worked around California's calendar. There are other lesser conflicts. Some teams might come down to choosing between SSXCN and, say, the New York Federation meet. I'm not in that position, so I don't want to belittle those who face that decision. But, it is a choice.

Small schools have always had the issue of multi-sport athletes. You go later than Nov 20 and you run a serious risk of losing a lot of those athletes. Actually, you will lose a lot of those athletes.

Not every small school in the country wants to keep training into December when their state season ended Oct 30 or Nov 6 (the vast majority of small schools in the nation).

We're going. Hope to see you there!

Alan Versaw

The Classical Academy XC

This is really cool. I wish something like this existed back in my day. My sub 300 student high school competed against schools 5 times our size.

Yep....cool for the small schools and big ones alike. Those poor, neglected middle sized schools.

The question was asked on the NXN 2021 Canceled thread if altitude exceptions would be given for the times listed for championship races for individuals. I have strong interest in the meet and helped the idea develop, but I don't make meet decisions like this. That said, I would argue altitude conversions should not be granted.

Here's a line of thought worth considering about that...

Most of Colorado runs at Liberty Bell (two-thirds hard surface and net downhill). Most of those who haven't run at Liberty Bell have run on a course somewhere that's mostly hard surface and/or short. If you haven't run 16:45/20:00 or faster in Colorado, you don't have a great case for being in the championship race. As it is, the standards are pretty generous. Altitude conversions are great for track where everyone runs on more or less equal courses. They are aren't nearly as good for comparing low-altitude times on grass to high-altitude times on courses that are substantially concrete.

You're allowed to disagree, of course, but the fact of the matter is that, at least for this year, the meet is first-come, first-served. Get your team registered and you're in one of the championship races. At this point, qualifying times are only for individuals. It's primarily a team event.

I've heard they are going to do potentially do two divisions, is it possible to do the smaller school division as a score 4 or even 3? Even with a Nov 20th date, small schools are going to lose athletes to basketball.

RichardRider wrote:

Yep....cool for the small schools and big ones alike. Those poor, neglected middle sized schools.

1000 really is mid sized.

In fact, I believe the media size high school is around 500, and the mean is around 800.

True small schools are always hurt the most. I work at a school with 60 kids per class. Try working with that. Every moderately athletic person has a spot on the football and basketball team if they want it. tough to put teams together working against that.

high school xc coach wrote:

RichardRider wrote:

Yep....cool for the small schools and big ones alike. Those poor, neglected middle sized schools.

1000 really is mid sized.

In fact, I believe the media size high school is around 500, and the mean is around 800.

True small schools are always hurt the most. I work at a school with 60 kids per class. Try working with that. Every moderately athletic person has a spot on the football and basketball team if they want it. tough to put teams together working against that.

*median.

high school xc coach wrote:

high school xc coach wrote:

1000 really is mid sized.

In fact, I believe the media size high school is around 500, and the mean is around 800.

True small schools are always hurt the most. I work at a school with 60 kids per class. Try working with that. Every moderately athletic person has a spot on the football and basketball team if they want it. tough to put teams together working against that.

*median.

Been on all 3 sides, small, medium and large. Our bb team had a bottleneck at 10th grade in the large school. JV scrubs to practice against a D1 lineup and top 25 nationally ranked team every year. Not too appealing for most and some really good plauers would just transfer to the nearest smaller oulier school and become an instant superstar. Meanwhile, lucky small schools have a giant black and white Hoosiers team pic in the gym where the top of the keys almost touch so old people remembef the glory days.

Football is all over the place in all sized schools. Aot of good athletic kids and parents dont want the i.juries and concushions these days so they dont play. Ive seen several 65+ foot shot putters in schools of all sizes pass on their senior year to maybe wrestle and just throw banking on scholarship in track.

As far as distance running goes: If you can develop some culture and some success in any size school, you can compete well against your class consistently. All percentages go up with numbers for sure. A small school that can get 15 boys out or a large school with 75 can compete well against other schools their size. I was at a school with 800 combined for several years and we beat the top large schools regularly with quality performances and depth across the board.

This is awesome. I went to a school of 800ish and we had a hard time fielding 5 in XC. The goal was for everyone to finish so we scored as a team lol. The thing is we had multiple guys go sub 17 though. So it would of fun to compete on a level playing field like this.

Kid from somewhere wrote:

I've heard they are going to do potentially do two divisions, is it possible to do the smaller school division as a score 4 or even 3? Even with a Nov 20th date, small schools are going to lose athletes to basketball.

It's a fair question to ask, but it's very unlikely that the meet would go score 4 or score 3 for a smaller division. You'd still be welcome to come, of course, but the standard for cross country is score 5 and it's not likely the meet will mess with the standard. It would cost the meet more participation than it would gain if that were to happen.

Levels of interest now are such that it seems likely the meet will have two divisions, but it's not a done deal yet.

The Nov 20 date does create a few winter sports problems. We'll be bringing at least one runner down who has basketball tryouts that week. He will need to navigate that with his basketball coach and may miss the first game or two (depends, I guess, on what they work out). There are, however, a few state XC meets that don't happen until Nov 13 (Arizona comes readily to mind). SSXCN decided to keep those states in the fold of being able to compete.

Bump. Looking forward to seeing this meet happen and grow. Forget the nonsense of RunningLane/Eastbay-Footlocker.

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