The 1987 Calif cross country state meet is featured the new MacFarland movie. This seems awfully late (ie, recent). Why did it take Calif that long to officially have this meet?
Did the state's large size make it impractical for teams to travel to a final state meet? Might they have had "super regions" championship meets which were "good enough" instead of a state meet?
Just hard to believe...
2 mile postal and footlocker nationals
There were NorCal and Socal Champs. That seemed to suffice. Long way from Crescent City to Chula Vista.
In all honesty, they should have waited longer than that. The logistics were a nightmare to get together and the first meet was far less competitive than the Southern Section finals. (It was more than just North and South btw,) We had several sections. Each section had different ways of breaking down the school sizes. So when you raced in the 2A class at Sections, you could be thrown into Large, Medium, or Small section at state. This meant the the second or third best team in the state might not even qualify because you had to win your section to get to state.
Each section (region) has their own way of doing things. Getting people accross the state to agree politically is a difficult thing.
Still is. You have schools of 4000+ racing from the Southern Section against McFarland that has 770 (also in D1). They should have about 6 more state titles and quite a few more state top 3 finishes. Currently their section put them in the highest division despite their enrollment in efforts of creating D1 as a "championship" division with the the best teams (most with 3000+ students). While a good idea this has kept McFarland from even making the state meet where they are a top 3 team for a school of their size.
The CIF has decided on a geographic state meet. Which is the right thing. But how do you do that fairly? So as you can see its a mess. Currently sections make their own rules for their sections and send who they want.