Has any team ever sent 4 individuals to NCAA nationals but not a whole team?

Wasn’t that the year Southern Miss won the Regional and were disqualified before the Nationals for having an ineligible runner on the team.

oregon oldtimer wrote:

Not NCAA, however, I recall this happened in JUCO nationals in 1980. College of Southern Idaho went 1-2-3-12 at the regional XC meet, qualifying all 4 individuals, but ended up the 3rd team and didn't qualify as a team. Adrian Royal went on to win the JUCO nationals a week later. Two weeks later he was trash-talking about beating Alberto and then went out and did just that at the TAC nationals. Go JUCO!

Found those results!

No idea where to look for the regional results before this, those may be lost. It also only shows the top 60 runners, but 3/4 of the College of Southern Idaho guys made that cut. Also no idea how JUCO qualifying worked in 1980, but seems like very few teams made it compared to NCAA, which I assume would make it much easier to take 4 and not a whole team.

Crazy! Thanks.

Not Nomar wrote:

Wasn’t that the year Southern Miss won the Regional and were disqualified before the Nationals for having an ineligible runner on the team.

I can't find those results or anything about the south regional that year. Oddly, USTFCCCA doesn't even have the winners or even who hosted the South regional in 2000.

I did find the results from the DI Championships from 2000. There are not Southern Miss runners in the race.

Anyone else know about this Southern Miss story? Very strange.

Southern Miss beat powerhouse USF.. LRC sleuths said Southern Miss #1 accepted money in Europe... Braman (head coach of USF) jumped on it elevated to NCAA Execs... El Mourjdoubi kicked out. 4 guys go to Nationals for Southern Miss, no team.

I remember hearing about a NESCAC school sending 5 to nationals. At the the time NESCAC rules didn’t allow schools to compete as a team. Only as individuals. Someone must know the whole story.

Seagraves wrote:

Not Nomar wrote:

Wasn’t that the year Southern Miss won the Regional and were disqualified before the Nationals for having an ineligible runner on the team.

I can't find those results or anything about the south regional that year. Oddly, USTFCCCA doesn't even have the winners or even who hosted the South regional in 2000.

I did find the results from the DI Championships from 2000. There are not Southern Miss runners in the race.

Anyone else know about this Southern Miss story? Very strange.

The results are on Milesplit:

I found something interesting, and maybe dates have gotten mixed up.

I cannot find anything for 2000, but in 1999, Southern Missouri won the South Region.

http://www.ustfccca.org/assets/results/xc-archive/NCAA-DI-South-1999-results.pdf

However, Southern Missouri is not at the 1999 Championships, and instead, 2nd place Alabama and 3rd place USF seem to have qualified.

https://trackandfieldnews.com/index.php/special-articles/336

Very strange. Maybe this is what you guys are talking about? Still, I do not see Southern Miss in the results at nationals. This is very odd.

Yes, 1999. Maybe the whole team had to sit out nationals...

http://tn.milesplit.com/meets/178553/results/311734/raw#.WdPlaRMrJeM

habs wrote:

[quote]

The results are on Milesplit:

http://tn.milesplit.com/meets/178551/results/311730/raw

It does not even show Southern Miss was at the regional in 2000.

So did they win the regional in 1999, got in trouble after that and weren't allowed to compete at nationals, and then got banned the next year in 2000? Or were they removed from results after the fact (seems unlikely)?

Pretty sure they canned the coach (who was picking out his best suit to wear at the awards banquet for winning Regional Coach of the Year) in that week between regionals and Nationals. It was only a few years ago they started holding the D1 races on Saturday, the extra 2 days that year did not help the Golden Eagles recover.

It was USM (University of Southern Mississippi) in 1999. They had recruited a bunch of foreign athletes and after they won the XC regional (I think they were ranked #2 in the country at the time) it came to light that one of their athletes, Yousri el Mejboubi, had accepted some prize money at a road race (someone told me it was a couple thousand $). When asked to return the money, he refused and as a result the entire team was disqualified. The team essentially disbanded and then the administration promptly discontinued the men's XC program at Southern Miss. To my knowledge they still don't have a men's XC team, however, they do have men's track and both women's programs.

Southern Mississippi - home of Jimmy Buffett and Tori Bowie!

Um.... ever heard of Mr Brett Favrè.

Seagraves wrote:

Making sure this is open to any DII or DIII archive scholars, has this ever happened in those divisions? I know qualifying for those divisions is a little different, but I think they take more individuals anyways so maybe it's more frequent there?

In the early 90’s NESCAC did not allow any sports teams to participate in national championships as a team. The Williams women qualified 5 individuals, and I am pretty sure they brought home a team trophy (3rd?). I think it was 1990.

oregon oldtimer wrote:

It was USM (University of Southern Mississippi) in 1999. They had recruited a bunch of foreign athletes and after they won the XC regional (I think they were ranked #2 in the country at the time) it came to light that one of their athletes, Yousri el Mejboubi, had accepted some prize money at a road race (someone told me it was a couple thousand $). When asked to return the money, he refused and as a result the entire team was disqualified. The team essentially disbanded and then the administration promptly discontinued the men's XC program at Southern Miss. To my knowledge they still don't have a men's XC team, however, they do have men's track and both women's programs.

Southern Mississippi - home of Jimmy Buffett and Tori Bowie!

That's so interesting. I'd never heard this story before. The odds for that to all come out at the worst possible time is very bizarre. Was the timing unrelated or was another coach/team/etc. that knew about it just bringing it up at the proper moment?

Old Eph wrote:

Seagraves wrote:

Making sure this is open to any DII or DIII archive scholars, has this ever happened in those divisions? I know qualifying for those divisions is a little different, but I think they take more individuals anyways so maybe it's more frequent there?

In the early 90’s NESCAC did not allow any sports teams to participate in national championships as a team. The Williams women qualified 5 individuals, and I am pretty sure they brought home a team trophy (3rd?). I think it was 1990.

What in the world is the rationale for not allowing your teams compete in a national championship? (Wikipedia says this went on in the NESCAC until 1993)

Old Eph wrote:

Seagraves wrote:

Making sure this is open to any DII or DIII archive scholars, has this ever happened in those divisions? I know qualifying for those divisions is a little different, but I think they take more individuals anyways so maybe it's more frequent there?

In the early 90’s NESCAC did not allow any sports teams to participate in national championships as a team. The Williams women qualified 5 individuals, and I am pretty sure they brought home a team trophy (3rd?). I think it was 1990.

Found those results!

Like you said, looks like they just had the 5 and they did place 3rd in the team results. Won't even bother trying to find the regional results for this but I assume they would have won their region (or actually maybe 2nd to SUNY Cortland, assuming NY and MA would be in the same region in 1990 but no idea) but either way, if they were good enough to get 3rd at nationals, it would make a lot of sense for them to send 5 individuals if they weren't allowed to send a team. Still don't understand why you wouldn't let a school in your conference compete at the national championships. But I guess the lesson here is:

If you run fast enough, the rules don't apply to you.

Thanks! Really good stuff.

As of a few years ago in the NAIA the top X number of finishers in the conference meet not on a qualifying team could go to nationals, the conference meets were the nationl qualifiers. X depended on the total number of teams in the meet, so even small conferences that only had one automatic bid as a team could send the next five individuals. If all five of those individual were from the same team they could run nationals as a team - only those five no #6 or #7 runners. This happened more than you would think, with two teams taking the top 10 spots or even the top 14. Two good teams in a weak conference obviously. One team wins and the other team gets to send 5 runners as a 'team'. As for 4 that happened too, but it was actually less noticable.

yeah, I guess ole Brett should be on the list as well. For that matter, we'll have to include Deanna Farve on the list too.

Like you said, looks like they just had the 5 and they did place 3rd in the team results. Won't even bother trying to find the regional results for this but I assume they would have won their region (or actually maybe 2nd to SUNY Cortland, assuming NY and MA would be in the same region in 1990 but no idea) but either way, if they were good enough to get 3rd at nationals, it would make a lot of sense for them to send 5 individuals if they weren't allowed to send a team. Still don't understand why you wouldn't let a school in your conference compete at the national championships. But I guess the lesson here is:

If you run fast enough, the rules don't apply to you.

Thanks! Really good stuff.[/quote]

As I recall, NESCAC teams did win a lot of regionals; the first non-NESCAC team would get the spot. The rationale was academics. Most/many championships conflict with final exams or have the potential to do so, and I think there was also just a sense of holding onto a more amateur model if college athletics. You can read about this in the Bowen/Shulman book, where they have a detailed account of the time post-1993 when the Williams president refused to let the women’s lacrosse team miss finals to play in their national tournament.

In this case the XC team petitioned to be allowed to bring their 6th and 7th runners, arguing that with 5 individual qualifiers they were a de facto team and thus would have more pressure to choose to attend the meet, since everyone had to score. But they were turned down, so just went ahead and did a great job as 5.