HS XC classifications

NY State has two state meets:

1. NYSPHSAA is 11 sections divided into 4 classes by size. No NYC schools and no CHSAA schools.

2. Federation Meet brings together the four associations- NYSPHSAA, PSAL (NYC public schools) CHSAA (NYC and some upstate Catholic schools) AAIS- private boarding schools.

No classes by size, one race.

Go to tullyrunners.com you can look at past results and they have the list of classes by section. Keep in mind they classify schools using enrollment for grades 10,11,12 in NY.

Ohio has 3 classifications for each boys & girls but they deperately need to be revamped. The classifications are based on enrollment.

Divison I is the biggest schools and is for schools with ≥ 301 boys. For girls it's ≥ 305. There is a school in Ohio that has over 1300 boys and 1200 girls. They compete in the same division with the schools that have just a bit over 300 of each.

Division II is the middle division and is for 158-300 boys. For girls it is 163-304.

Division III is the smallest division and is for schools with ≤ 157 boys and ≤ 162 girls.

There really should be at least 4 divisons. The mega-schools, with attendance figures that are approaching 1000 of each sex or greater, should be in a division by themselves. The schools with attendance that hovers in the 300-500 range can rarely compete at the state meet with those schools. It's been talked about for years but the Ohio HS Athletic Association places little emphasis on cross. Football, meanwhile, has 7 divisions.

I'm not sure what the breakdown numbers are for T&F but they're similar. The state championship track meet is at Jesse Owens Track at Ohio State but there was a year or two that 3 different tracks were used. For those schools that had boys in one division and firls in the other division, it was an issue if each team had the same coach which is usually the case for HS track. Thankfully all meets are now back at Ohio State.

Other sports are sort of messed up also. Boys golf has 3 divisons but the girls only have 2. Soccer is 3 divisions for each gender and the smaller schools of D1 are at a huge disadvantage. Field hockey is just 1 division but there are probably less than 50 schools total that have teams. Basketball gets 4 divisions for each gender. Swimming and diving only get 2 divisions each. Softball & baseball each get 4 divisions.

That's really cool... thanks for the info. That's a nice way to have some different team aspects based on enrollment numbers and then a sort of de-facto overall championship... interesting

That is crazy complicated... Indiana is pretty similar with different classifications for different sports... you know... because high enrollments only impact football and basketball... (deep sigh of frustration)

In New Mexico our governing body (NMAA) has schools broken up into 5 classifications for most sports (6 for football, plus an 8-man, very small school option.

For XC we have

5A- roughly 1400 HS (9-12) students and larger.

4A- 800-1400 HS students.

3A- approx 350-800 HS students.

1A-2A- less than 350 HS students.

Two exceptions besides football mentioned above. 1) 1A is broken out from 1A-2A in some sports, including track. 2) Private schools are weighted with a 1.5 multiplier (each student counts as a student and a half). The theory is private schools get a higher participation rate, a lesser amount of poor academic (ineligible) students.

Of note: NM is a small state, we have roughly 2.7 million ppl and that put some of the larger classifications with only 25-30 schools.

-Coach Kedge, Albuquerque Academy

I love the way New York does it, in theory. I like the class thing for teams, and Fed meet for individuals. It is a perfect set up. IN THEORY. In real life, many of the top teams and runners skip the fed meet to prepare for NXR or FL, and we don't get that true champion. Almost everybody looks at the class championships at the real state champ, and don't put a lot of thought into the fed thing.

It is still a high quality race, just very incomplete.

Yeah, it is pretty complicated. Those cutoff numbers change from year to year but are always about the same. The smaller division I schools really are at a big disadvantage against those mega schools. Some have proposed making a mega school disivion. You would be surprised how many schools have 1000 students of each sex. Most of the mega schools seem to be in southwest Ohio and I think it's because the school districts cover a lot of area. The high schools in the Columbus and Cleveland areas are not quite as large because the districts are smaller but there are still some pretty big schools. A lot of the smaller divison II schools may also be at a disadvantage. There have been times when one year a school could be division III one year and competing in division II the next year against schools that were divison I the year before.

The fairest thing to do would probably be to make a division for the 20 to 25 largest schools. It has been talked about but I doubt that it will ever happen.

So these divisions are based on total students and not by sex? What about schools that are not coed? That is why Ohio does it based on sex. There are schools that are boy's schools or girl's schools. There are not a lot of them and are usually the Catholic schools.

I used to live in Michigan and for that state the upper peninsula and lower peninsula have seperate championships for cross country. I think that the other sports that have seperate UP & LP championships are T&F, golf, swimming & diving, and tennis.

In New York, the Catholics only compete with the public school at Feds, otherwise, I think you double the enrollment number for single sex schools.

Illinois

3 classes

A - 0-678

AA - 679-1665

AAA - >1665

Single sex schools are doubled.

Non-boundried schools have a factor 1.65, which is waived unless the team has won a trophy or had enough success based on regional and sectional titles and state placement in the previous 2 year cycle.