I have thought of this meet as described as “club” so should be open to all members of USATF clubs whose racer have USATF membership. Those should be the only requirements to score for your club. NCAA athletes don’t have to be US citizens but must follow NCAA requirements for eligibility. The New England USATF association does not require citizenship.
This post was edited 7 minutes after it was posted.
To compete in the NCAA Championships, you must be an eligible athlete. To compete in the USATF championships, you must be a US citizen. The rules make perfect sense. OAC, Boweman, and NAZ should support more American runners.
To compete in the NCAA Championships, you must be an eligible athlete. To compete in the USATF championships, you must be a US citizen. The rules make perfect sense. OAC, Boweman, and NAZ should support more American runners.
Why do you feel the USATF policy inherently makes sense? Lots of people come here for work, grad school, and other reasons. They like to join and compete for local club teams same as anyone else. Why should they be barred from running certain races with their teammates? We already have association residency requirements, to keep people from just assembling a team of ringers from wherever, why do we also need a citizenship requirement? For individual champions, sure, but doesn't make sense for club teams.
Slight regret at missing, but the moment I heard that this year's clubs would be back in Tallahassee I was pretty ehh and ulitmately decided not to go. If it had been in Lexington or at Lehigh I probably would have gone. What is with FL getting all the bids now?
Next year in Tacoma according to unconfirmed reports.
Tacoma, Washington? As in the opposite corner of the country?
Yes. They rotate between East Coast and West Coast locations....at least since I've paid attention.
To compete in the NCAA Championships, you must be an eligible athlete. To compete in the USATF championships, you must be a US citizen. The rules make perfect sense. OAC, Boweman, and NAZ should support more American runners.
Do you give bonus points to Clubs that only support American runners?
Tacoma, Washington? As in the opposite corner of the country?
Yes. They rotate between East Coast and West Coast locations....at least since I've paid attention.
Mostly but not always. Club XC is a spinoff from the USA national championships (AAU, TAC, etc.) which used to be held the Saturday following Thanksgiving. That championship sometimes did feature foreigners and the very top US runners. In the late 1990s USATF pushed it back two weeks and created Club XC to generate a wider interest. Since then it has never really been an elite race, more of a set of citizens and age group races to promote club running. Certainly the top 5 or 10 individuals at Club XC are very good but generally not the A-listers/those running on US Teams.
In the past 25 years, it has been in the South and Midwest a couple or few times each, otherwise mostly within a couple hours of the East or West Coasts. Looks like Tallahassee and FL will be frequent hosts into the future.
Mostly but not always. Club XC is a spinoff from the USA national championships (AAU, TAC, etc.) which used to be held the Saturday following Thanksgiving. That championship sometimes did feature foreigners and the very top US runners. In the late 1990s USATF pushed it back two weeks and created Club XC to generate a wider interest. Since then it has never really been an elite race, more of a set of citizens and age group races to promote club running. Certainly the top 5 or 10 individuals at Club XC are very good but generally not the A-listers/those running on US Teams.
In the past 25 years, it has been in the South and Midwest a couple or few times each, otherwise mostly within a couple hours of the East or West Coasts. Looks like Tallahassee and FL will be frequent hosts into the future.
Is USATF seriously thinking this? They had just 25 teams and 180 runners this year in the men's open race. Last year in SF it was 45 full teams and 440 runners, in Lehigh it was 79 teams and 617 runners. Out of the entire state of Florida only one team ran this year, a local team from Tallahassee. Looks like they've had NO teams make the trip when it was in other states.
Clearly club XC running just isn't much of a thing in Florida. So why make everyone else take a bunch of connecting flights to get down there and run in hot, humid weather?
Mostly but not always. Club XC is a spinoff from the USA national championships (AAU, TAC, etc.) which used to be held the Saturday following Thanksgiving. That championship sometimes did feature foreigners and the very top US runners. In the late 1990s USATF pushed it back two weeks and created Club XC to generate a wider interest. Since then it has never really been an elite race, more of a set of citizens and age group races to promote club running. Certainly the top 5 or 10 individuals at Club XC are very good but generally not the A-listers/those running on US Teams.
In the past 25 years, it has been in the South and Midwest a couple or few times each, otherwise mostly within a couple hours of the East or West Coasts. Looks like Tallahassee and FL will be frequent hosts into the future.
Is USATF seriously thinking this? They had just 25 teams and 180 runners this year in the men's open race. Last year in SF it was 45 full teams and 440 runners, in Lehigh it was 79 teams and 617 runners. Out of the entire state of Florida only one team ran this year, a local team from Tallahassee. Looks like they've had NO teams make the trip when it was in other states.
Clearly club XC running just isn't much of a thing in Florida. So why make everyone else take a bunch of connecting flights to get down there and run in hot, humid weather?
I was going to bring up Lehigh- that was an awesome meet.
I don't understand why so many events are going to Florida- the weather sucks and thinking that Florida Man can do anything right is just absurd.
I just read that Florida is experiencing a mass exodus because of many different issues- housing, insurance, etc, etc- maybe USATF will leave too.
When it's in the east keep it in the southern Pennsylbama to Virginia region.
To compete in the NCAA Championships, you must be an eligible athlete. To compete in the USATF championships, you must be a US citizen. The rules make perfect sense. OAC, Boweman, and NAZ should support more American runners.
Do you give bonus points to Clubs that only support American runners?
Yes I do. This Meet is an excellent American Developmental event. I appreciate those that support this event and see American development as important. I hate when US based teams sell out and go after the low hanging fruit. I think it is because sponsors just want the brand out there and don’t care about developing young American runners.
To compete in the NCAA Championships, you must be an eligible athlete. To compete in the USATF championships, you must be a US citizen. The rules make perfect sense. OAC, Boweman, and NAZ should support more American runners.
Why do you feel the USATF policy inherently makes sense? Lots of people come here for work, grad school, and other reasons. They like to join and compete for local club teams same as anyone else. Why should they be barred from running certain races with their teammates? We already have association residency requirements, to keep people from just assembling a team of ringers from wherever, why do we also need a citizenship requirement? For individual champions, sure, but doesn't make sense for club teams.
Limiting these meets to US runners was not always the case. Wille Ritola was Finnish and was champion four times in the '20s. Al Lawrence was Australian and won in 1959 and 1960 and Bruce Kidd was Canadian and won in 1961 and '63. There were others. Neil Cusack would have won in 1972 but he went to the wrong side of a pylon and was DQed after Frank Shorter protested. I believe Adrian Royle was the last foreign winner and I believe it was in 1993 that the rule was changed and foreign runners were no longer allowed to run. It was a last second change, an Irish friend of mine was entered and had already flown to Missoula when he was told he couldn't run. It would have been nice if he'd either been reimbursed for his fare or allowed to run with the understanding that he could never do it again.
I'm not sure which policy makes the most sense in terms of allowing or not allowing foreign runners to run in US championships. It certainly makes sense to make them ineligible to be US Champion and maybe if you don't like the idea of your national champion finishing second or fifth or some such thing in the race it does make sense.
Mostly but not always. Club XC is a spinoff from the USA national championships (AAU, TAC, etc.) which used to be held the Saturday following Thanksgiving. That championship sometimes did feature foreigners and the very top US runners. In the late 1990s USATF pushed it back two weeks and created Club XC to generate a wider interest. Since then it has never really been an elite race, more of a set of citizens and age group races to promote club running. Certainly the top 5 or 10 individuals at Club XC are very good but generally not the A-listers/those running on US Teams.
In the past 25 years, it has been in the South and Midwest a couple or few times each, otherwise mostly within a couple hours of the East or West Coasts. Looks like Tallahassee and FL will be frequent hosts into the future.
Is USATF seriously thinking this? They had just 25 teams and 180 runners this year in the men's open race. Last year in SF it was 45 full teams and 440 runners, in Lehigh it was 79 teams and 617 runners. Out of the entire state of Florida only one team ran this year, a local team from Tallahassee. Looks like they've had NO teams make the trip when it was in other states.
Clearly club XC running just isn't much of a thing in Florida. So why make everyone else take a bunch of connecting flights to get down there and run in hot, humid weather?
You are preaching to the choir here. Check Club XC in SF from 2015. There were more than 2000 runners overall and they had to have two open races for men to keep the fields under 500. They need to rotate between East Coast, West Coast, Midwest (probably avoid northern tier, but certainly Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, KS), and South and maybe occasionally Mountain Region/SW (Denver/C. Springs/Pueblo or Albuquerque or Arizona). Bend was kind of fun, but hard to get to. Keep the venue 1.5 hours or less to a major airport.
-The course certainly looked fast (at least when we jogged it on Friday). It didn't seem as fast on Saturday during the race - ha!
-Temp from my weather app at 9:45 was 68 degrees (so maybe 70 during my old man section), An hour later it was 71. Checked at the start of the men's open and it war 75 (maybe 77 at the end). I have run in worse, but it was not 'comfortable'. Probably cost me +1:30 compared to ideal conditions. But at least it was dry.
-Not sure where the other commenters saw soft/muddy(?) footing. My high school XC courses from the early to mid 1970s made this look like road race conditions. It wasn't super fast with the sweeping turns and rolls and 3x the 'hill'. On the other hand, it was not terrible.
- I heard from a couple different sources the for the 2026 World's they have stipulated that they need to 'toughen up' the course (think hay bales, moguls, etc.)
- Yes, it was a pain to get to the race. Cheapest way to get there was to fly into Orlando or Jacksonville and then a long drive to get there.
-Lastly, the live commentary for all the other races and the jumbotron with its splits screens were outstanding.
-The course certainly looked fast (at least when we jogged it on Friday). It didn't seem as fast on Saturday during the race - ha!
-Temp from my weather app at 9:45 was 68 degrees (so maybe 70 during my old man section), An hour later it was 71. Checked at the start of the men's open and it war 75 (maybe 77 at the end). I have run in worse, but it was not 'comfortable'. Probably cost me +1:30 compared to ideal conditions. But at least it was dry.
-Not sure where the other commenters saw soft/muddy(?) footing. My high school XC courses from the early to mid 1970s made this look like road race conditions. It wasn't super fast with the sweeping turns and rolls and 3x the 'hill'. On the other hand, it was not terrible.
- I heard from a couple different sources the for the 2026 World's they have stipulated that they need to 'toughen up' the course (think hay bales, moguls, etc.)
- Yes, it was a pain to get to the race. Cheapest way to get there was to fly into Orlando or Jacksonville and then a long drive to get there.
-Lastly, the live commentary for all the other races and the jumbotron with its splits screens were outstanding.
The course footing wasn't terrible by any means, but it was slower than 2021. 2021 felt track-esque in the energy return, while this year was a bit softer. I've heard different theories as to why, but I noticed it immediately on the shakeout Friday.
Not complaining, we all had the same course.
It did seem to mean a slower day despite slightly cooler temps than 2 years ago (ha). Also, there was no water in the woods like 2021. That was a lifesaver for me in the open race, as I was pouring a full bottle on my head each loop in '21.
Is USATF seriously thinking this? They had just 25 teams and 180 runners this year in the men's open race. Last year in SF it was 45 full teams and 440 runners, in Lehigh it was 79 teams and 617 runners. Out of the entire state of Florida only one team ran this year, a local team from Tallahassee. Looks like they've had NO teams make the trip when it was in other states.
Clearly club XC running just isn't much of a thing in Florida. So why make everyone else take a bunch of connecting flights to get down there and run in hot, humid weather?
I was going to bring up Lehigh- that was an awesome meet.
I don't understand why so many events are going to Florida- the weather sucks and thinking that Florida Man can do anything right is just absurd.
I just read that Florida is experiencing a mass exodus because of many different issues- housing, insurance, etc, etc- maybe USATF will leave too.
When it's in the east keep it in the southern Pennsylbama to Virginia region.
More north and you risk a bad snowstorm.
Thinking the Delaware man can do anything right is even more absurd.
Why do people keep bringing up running? I came to this site because I was told it was the home of neo-fascist, racist, misogynistic, and anti-vax discussion. I've always thought it weird how people diverge from the main topics and it devolves into some boather about jogging.
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