Does every college race in a regional final? Or do you have to qualify from your conference final to get to a regional?
Does every college race in a regional final? Or do you have to qualify from your conference final to get to a regional?
Every college in a region gets to race it.
However, sometimes a college will not send a full team and will only send their best individuals or no one at all. I knew of an assistant coach at a medium sized mid-major, that was told by his Head Coach, that if they didn't finish in the top 3 at Conference they couldn't bring a team to Regionals. The Head coach's logic was that if they didn't get it done at Conference, which is smaller and easier, then they for sure wouldn't "get it done" at Regionals and would embarrass the program. In the end, my buddy said this hurt recruiting because other schools told kids that they were both going after that his team didn't get to run at Regionals.
Regionals is an open meet for DI schools. It is also the qualifier for nationals.
While every school may send a squad of 7, not every school does. There are nine regions with a little over 40 schools per Region (except for Mountain, which has less than 20).
It varies, but most regions usually see 25 out of the 40+ teams compete in a year. Power 5 schools rarely skip out, but for many conferences it is not uncommon for bottom half teams to opt out of the regional or send individuals.
The one Region that has very few opt outs...the Mountain.