HS Times that Don't Advance

Not time-based, but my XC team in high school went undefeated, then we found ourselves in a state qualifier on the other side of the state, where our school had never run, against teams our school had never seen. We missed qualifying for state by a few points, and then the state meet was made up predominately of teams we'd beat on all season.

Back in the late ‘80s, my HS had a 1:54.5 (I forget exactly what it was) 800 guy who never even made it to state. Our district only sent one guy to state, another school had a kid his age who was the best 800 runner in the state, and qualifying on time was nearly impossible.

In my current state he probably would have been a 3 time state champion since he was basically that fast as a sophomore.

Ohio has had similar situations, particularly in D1. You need to place in the top four to advance out of Districts, with no exceptions or "at-large" bids based on time.

From Regionals to State it's the same thing (top four advance), but there are 2 at-large options so situations like the above don't happen. A few years back in a particularly strong year, I do remember 1:54 not getting out of Regionals. But that doesn't seem nearly the anomaly as the 4:18 kid not even advancing out of Districts.

People who ran 4:13 at region in texas didn't qualify for state

Not a time, per se, but a few years back, the top 3200 guy in Louisiana 1A division. The starter was an old school guy. The runner was slightly rocking back and forth on the line before the start, so the starter DQ'd him. No warning, just DQ'd. The kid was 20 seconds faster than the rest of the field.

There are 36 guys just in the CA Southern Section with times under 4:18.

Yep, and 85 in California according to Athletic.net.

To make state in Colorado it took about a 4:20 mile this year, which converts to about 4:14. The top two ran the equivalent of right around 4:00-4:01 in the 4A race.

Incredible. I guess that's what happens when you have 40 million people. Making it to the CA State meet is almost like making Nationals in college.

Brian Sullivan (The Woodlands, Texas) ran 4:11 in his district meet and that was not good enough to extend his season.

In Texas HS UIL (public schools) meets, districts are the first level championship meets, then regionals, and finally the state meet.

There are 32 districts and 4 regions in each conference, 1A (smallest schools), 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A (largest). 6A was added around 2012-14.

In 2003, the top 2 qualifiers from each district qualified to regionals and, then the top 2 from regionals qualified to state. They have since changed it so that at districts, the top 3 qualify for regionals. At regionals, the top 2 qualify as does the fastest 3rd place finisher (at large).

At the 2003 UIL district 15-5A meet, Brian Sullivan (The Woodlands) ran 4:11.14. However, his season ended that night as Steve Magness (Klein Oak) ran 4:01.58 and Eric Stanley (Klein) ran 4:03.77.

In my section in California, the 4th place guy in my race ran a 1:53.12 800 in the finals and missed state. Only top 3 go in the section (this is how most sections are, minus southern section which is 6), and he missed the auto-qualifying time by like a tenth of a second, must’ve been a terrible feeling.

At least CA does have the at-larges though, I didn’t realize other states didn’t have at-larges, that’s hella dumb.