NY Fed Meet cancelled due to weather/course conditions

Also not a new yorker wrote:

Thanks for explaining this. Has there ever been talk of eliminating the 4 federations and just creating one unified high school athletic association?

Great question and I don't know the answer, but any answer would have to take into account the fact that other sports utilize the federation system as well. Two things about that. First, you can see that the system might work better in a sport such as basketball, where competing multiple times in a week is not an issue, versus cross country, where teams are reluctant to compete multiple weekends in a row. I don't think that football, which is more akin to XC given the limited ability to play many games, even has a federation championship (I could be wrong).

Second, the competitiveness of each federation varies significantly by sport. While the PHSAA (non-NYC public schools) is pretty dominant in cross country, it is the least competitive of the federations in a sport like basketball, where the top teams are typically Catholic schools, independent schools, and NYC public schools (with some notable exceptions like Mt. Vernon).

Thus while creating one unified system makes a lot of sense, you can see where many constituencies might want to keep it the way it is to continue isolating the competitive buckets.

get rid of nike altogether. end hs national championships. each state have their own state meet of champs. end of season

ocracoke wrote:

This is butt-eating absurd.

In my best Malmo impersonation - "No it isn't."

Football doesn’t even have a full state championships as the Long Island teams don’t compete in it. State pretty much does what it wants

Nike has given wanna be professional coaches a place to shine at the hs level. Where would our sport be without this team championship - our college and pro system is so much better due to the development these kids get from these pro coaches early on

It made more sense before NXN. Back then there was just Kinney (now Footlocker) and that didn't have a team component, so lots of people didn't run it. The season was still really long, but it ended with the Fed meet. I personally loved the Fed meet, and I think it would be a bummer if they canceled it, but you can't deny that there are too many championship meets.

The other thing to remember about the state meet, is that the races are divided out by class (school size). It allows small schools to race for a state championship against other schools their size, rather than get killed or not even qualify against the big schools. Also, you might have the 2 best schools in the state in the same section, and in that case, only one of them gets to compete in the state meet, whereas both teams would get to run at the Fed meet.

The main point is, the two meets serve different purposes.

What pansies. We got a foot of snow in NJ yesterday. We're running MOC tomorrow (yeah we're gonna win because we are CBA and everyone else sucks). We don't sit at home rolling out cookie dough like the NYers.

Nah you guys are just servicing the priests and bishops all day

Also not a new yorker wrote:

Can someone please explain the whole post-season system of NY cross country? I thought Feds was the equivalent of the state meet in other states? But now it sounds like lots of people skip it? I think you have section or region meets to get to state? Thanks in advance!

The idea behind the Federation meet was to bring four distinct federations together the only problem is one of the federation's (that would be the city PSAL) is very strong in track but weak in xc......and the private or Collegiate Association is rather small and often weak ....then there is the Catholic High School Athletic Association which is small but they do have outstanding quality ....but the Big Kahuna is the the upstate PSAL and the teams that win these divisions often feel they've prove the point that they are already the best in the state and they have see no need to go to a another meet something they already feel.....soooo they wait up for the Nike meet rather then participating in a fake state meet.... the real answer is to have Federation meet be the Nike qualifier but there are people at play here who are more interested in their Turf than doing what's right for the kids as is often the case.... one solution could be having that the Federation meet e held a little earlier to give teams time to recover before the Nike meet.... and another idea would be to move the site of the Federation meet around you could use Van Cortlandt you could use Long Island you could use Buffalo but the Federation seems to be obsessed with the Bowdoin Park facility.... turns out to be nothing but another small Regional meet...

Deadstream wrote:

One thing that should be remembered when pondering all of this...

New York States high school sports governing bodies don't like to be told what they should do...PARTICULARLY when they're laughably wrong and the new idea makes perfect sense.

They're kinda petulant that way.

Petulant is the word.

Undereducated, overpaid, short-sighted, territorial, backward-looking, pension-collecting, semi-literate, and reactionary would be others. I'm lukewarm on corporate influence in high school sports, but, my God, just let Nike take the whole thing over at this point.

We are a group concerned about a lowly sport like cross country. Yeah no big deal if Nike takes over our state fed meet... that leads to a qualifier to an national tournament we don’t approve of... yes - it’s not a big deal for xc - but if you open the door —- it would get out of control for basketball, lacrosse ect. We look at this in a bubble -

As a native New Yorker that raced at Feds in HS, I never knew why it was called 'Feds'. Thanks for this brief lesson!

kyleohbrien wrote:

As a native New Yorker that raced at Feds in HS, I never knew why it was called 'Feds'. Thanks for this brief lesson!

Best post of the thread.

Poll of the Day!

Name two athletic shoe companies, who are going to be processing a few thousand extra dollars worth of late entry fees over the next few days, and probably aren't even a little unhappy that Feds got cancelled.

Jersey? please... Five f*ckin families and then we got this other Pygmy thing over in Jersey...

Deadstream wrote:

One thing that should be remembered when pondering all of this...

New York States high school sports governing bodies don't like to be told what they should do...PARTICULARLY when they're laughably wrong and the new idea makes perfect sense.

They're kinda petulant that way.

Amen. If you want to know what the AAU was like in the 1970s, just look at the way the New York high school sports associations run now. It isn’t about the kids, it’s about keeping an old school boys club of retired Athletic Directors in power. There is no reason the federation meet could have been run somewhere else, or plow off the three inches of snow now on the course. Problem is that would require some work. It’s the same reason Bowdoin is the courses every year, too much effort to find other courses.

Some of my favorite examples of how screwed up New York sports are:

A. The barrettes police..... the hired meet official who makes sure that girls don’t have barrettes in their hair, that glasses worn have a doctor’s prescription, and that labels aren’t visible on undergarments , and that shoes have laces .

B. The nonsensical way teams are selected for the state meet. In the sectionals, the Liverpool girls lost to FM by 1, whothen lost to Saratoga by 1 for the state championship. Liverpool didn’t go to the state championship. John Coleman went to the state championship simply because they were the only team in their sectional class. In some sections 34 teams run for one state bid , in other sections teams make it to states simply because they have 5 runners finish. The whole system makes zero sense but the powers that be fight change every step of the way.

The only savings grace is the track state championship is much much worse. All these athletes running and no one has any idea which federation or class an athlete is in. My favorite story is 5 or so years ago a relay team I coached went to the state track championships in the small school division. Results are announced and my athletes are second . They are handing out the awards and the first team gets on the podium and the announcer says “I don’t think the winning school is in the NYSPHSAA.” Sure enough they are in the private school class and have to refigure the results.

Hounddogharrier wrote:

The only savings grace is the track state championship is much much worse. All these athletes running and no one has any idea which federation or class an athlete is in. My favorite story is 5 or so years ago a relay team I coached went to the state track championships in the small school division. Results are announced and my athletes are second . They are handing out the awards and the first team gets on the podium and the announcer says “I don’t think the winning school is in the NYSPHSAA.” Sure enough they are in the private school class and have to refigure the results.

I can give you a dozen different examples of what a laughing stock NY's track qualifying process is, but off the top of my head...in spring season of 2014, Section 1 had ten sub-4:20 kids at 1600m, but only two of them could "qualify" for states and the other eight got left home, while other sections were sending 4:40-4:50 kids.

Same year, Northport HS from Section 11 had three sub-9:00 guys at 3200m, all from the same school, and one of them literally could not "qualify" for states, while another Section sent a 10:12 kid and a 10:23 kid.

NY State Meets aren't "Championships". They're "Field Days".

Ny state meets are considered intersectional championships. It’s the same for every team sport. You could be ranked number 1 in the state if you lose sectionals you don’t move on to compete against the next section. Cross country is the same a every other team sport in nys. For track they approved the super standard for athletes who are in tough sections starting his year. Again - each section gets to be represented at the meet because it is an intersectional championship.