USATF excluding Brooks winner from U20 XC team

I'm happy about it. There should be one high school national championship and this helps cement that Nike is the true national championship.

I'm surprised that USATF made the decision to exclude Brooks. But who knows if it was an anti-Brooks/pro-Nike decision, or if the decision was made for another reason.

In any case, the USATF U20 race is going to be pretty bad this year. Top college runners rarely run the U20 race, and almost all of the top high school runners will be running NXN that day.

If I was a high school runner ranked around 10th or 15th in the country and I had no realistic shot to win NXN, and I wasn't running on an NXN team, I'd skip NXN and do U20 and have a great shot to finish top 5 and make a world team.

After 20 years, Nike FINALLY achieved their goal of ending Footlocker.

Nike: "Yea!" (pops champaign)

But wait! It's back under a new name! And with a better format!

Nike: "What the F^*@!" (writes big check to Max)

Max: "Thy will be done!" (with $$ in his eyes)

Brooks winner excluded from USATF U20 team

It's really no secret that Nike and USATF are bed partners. The 25 year agreement is a pretty good hint and this has been case all the way back to the 80s.

I'm not really sure any other US company as would put up the same budget as Nike anyway though.

Why so few college runners in U20? Pretty simple they are too old. Your last U20 year is the calendar year that you turn 19.

Many college freshman are not even eligible, so U20 college kids are a very small pool.

Poster who suggested doing the U20 race instead of NXN, if not on a team is very astute.

NXN is the fastest highschool XC championship right now. It makes sense.

Why should Brooks get a spot on the U20 team? It's not Footlocker, it's a first year event, I hear registration numbers are awful, and the only way they are getting top talent is to allow them to run just nationals and not qualify like everyone else. And all of those individuals will already be racing NXN anyway. Footlocker became a second-tier meets years ago and it doesn't look like Brooks will even match that.

These meets will fill up like always when it gets closer to date; especially right after some nxr races are over.

The only folks going without a qualifier are their 10 wildcards, which makes sense since they go to people with a conflict.

Nike has teams. If there's one of the best runners with a team with a shot at making Nike he/she is going to run Nike.

Brooks will still get great runners and the best can double up but we DO need one national championship and teams should be part of it.

I love Brooks, they're my favorite shoes and clothing and I love that they are contributing to the sport like this but the reality is, Nike supplanted Footlocker years ago for that reason.

OK then it should be Footlocker since NXN sprung up decades after FL was running a more than adequate national championship

FL was first, but NXN is more comprehensive. It has 9 regional races instead of 4. This makes it logistically easier for kids to run regional races. It allows the best teams to compete. Many top individuals are on teams and cannot compete in both. If Brooks saved the golden tickets to bring in top NXN individuals (most likely from teams or west region who can't qualify for both), that would make sense. Instead they are giving them out in October.

Years ago, just before NXN started. One of the Footlocker Regional guys told me that Nike wanted them to add teams to FL but FL didn't think it was necessary. I disagreed and I really don't understand why they didn't go along with it.

Footlocker or whatever they're calling it these days is a great race. It still gets elites but you can't argue that it's superior to Nike.

The team aspect means so much and it's taken second fiddle for the kids who are forced to double.

Makes sense, the FLN winner earned a USATF U20spot, but with the Brooks takeover you don't know what you are going to get. Also, I expect the USA's best juniors to contest USATF this year because the race is at home.

I'm no Nike fan, but I dislike Brooks even more. They shouldn't have revived the event and they were so presumptuous to think they would have a U20 qualifier.

I hope the meet flops miserably and if I have to see one more of their cringy Golden Ticket reveals I think I'll puke.

Use a registered username for this kind of post. As is you look like a Nike employee.

A shame. I know all the regional Footlocker meet directors have stepped in, and the meets themselves will be as good I reckon. The big issues will be the final product, coupled with who shows up.

It is gutting to see Footlocker just walk, though. It was a boneheaded move—I have to think Dicks Sporting Goods would have gotten good vibes and publicity for not a lot of outlay (since they had an ongoing HOKA sponsorship for this year if it had gone forward).

Just decidedly shortsighted, and a shame.

(And I may be biased; I can drive to the regional FL/Brooks meet. Cannot do the same for NXN. And I do get that's more of an outlier since there are more NXN regionals than old FL regionals! Ha.)

Nobody should get an automatic U-20 spot for XC Worlds. If you want to make the team, run the qualifying race. High school boys and girls race a 5K and the U-20 is a 6k for girls and an 8k for boys. How is it fair to win a 5k and get a spot? It's not. The USA needs to find their best at those distances. How is this fair to the 6th runner in the U-29 races? It's not. We need to do better for our distance runners.

Nobody should get an automatic U-20 spot for XC Worlds. If you want to make the team, run the qualifying race. High school boys and girls race a 5K and the U-20 is a 6k for girls and an 8k for boys. How is it fair to win a 5k and get a spot? It's not. The USA needs to find their best at those distances. How is this fair to the 6th runner in the U-20 races? It's not. We need to do better for our distance runners.