Pennsylvania School Wins State Team XC Title With 5 Individual Qualifiers

lease wrote:

I think something like this happened, many moons ago, in the NCAA.

IIRC Williams College had a policy (at the time) of not advancing teams to NCAA D3 championship competitions. But in the Regional meet, five women from Williams qualified individually. So they ran as a team in the National meet.

I believe the NCAA and/or Williams took action to make sure this could not happen again.

Your NCAA point is mute.

The NCAA format does not allow 10 individual Regional qualifiers (they allow 5, sometimes 6), making it virtually impossible for a team to have the next 5 individuals not on one of the two advancing teams. The team would be an at large qualifier before the scenario you cite would play out.

The purpose of a regional meet is to identify the best teams and individuals to advance and compete at the state level. Scoring teams are defined as top 5 places. The school got enough athletes into the state meet to score 5 members, what would be the incentive to disqualify them from counting in the team results? Is there some advantage to running with fewer members at states? Do all team athletes line up with different colored numbers so that individuals are ignored during the race?

Of course not. They had enough members to score with no advantage from running the minimum number of scoring athletes. So what could possibly gained by disqualifying them from competing as a team?

What second place team would want to be called state champions on a technicality when on the day of the race, head to head they lost to athletes competing legitimately in the meet?

Rf wrote:

Fred Gwynne wrote:

Coach: PA has a strong AAA XC programs. Single A is a complete joke.

Something similar 'almost' happened in the 3A meet back when district 12 only had one team and 5 individuals qualifiers for a couple years. I think in 2011 or 2012 Ohara won the district meet and went on to get 2nd or 3rd at the state meet, while lasalle grabbed all 5 qualifying spots and would have got 3rd or 4th at the state meet if their results counted.

LaSalle did get all 5 individual qualifying spot and since they had 5 finish in the state meet, they counted in the team standings. They were in fact 5th place in 3A. This was also the 2nd year in a row that O'Hara lost the state team title on a tie-breaker

Butler Fan wrote:

bruce denton's gold medal wrote:

Why not? I'm not saying that to be a jerk, just curious as to the rationale.

Exactly like I said. Under their rules, the top 2 TEAMS advance. They did not run well enough as a team to finish in the top 2 at their regional (or whatever it was). Since their TEAM did not advance, they are individuals from that point on.

Under their rules, if 5 INDIVIDUALS qualify from one team they are eligible to compete as a team. Since five qualified, they are also a team from that point on.

How on earth are you claiming they NOT A TEAM???

yalls are so silly LOL

I coach XC/TF in Alabama and 2 years ago had 5 individual girl qualifiers (from a 5A Catholic school) and would have earned 2nd at State. It would have been great to get a nice trophy but we knew beforehand we were not considered a team. However, because of this, they have since changed the rules. My biggest beef is that unlike track, there are no 'wildcard' state entry's and some very slow teams make it to State ahead of much faster teams in more competitive sections. It's really a question of why they allow same number of teams from every section to qualify for State when the competition across the state isn't equal.

Libertarian Centrist wrote:

As a libertarian, this absolutely should not be allowed. Results should be reversed.

What does being a libertarian have to do with this? Also, based on some of your posts, I am not sure you know what a libertarian is.

Each section (actually District in PA) does not qualify the same number of teams. In PA, it is on a proportional system where the number of team and individual slots is proportional (roughly) to the number of those size schools in that district. For example, in District 6 there are many small (A) schools and few large (AAA) schools in the district so A gets two qualifying teams and 10 individuals whereas AAA gets one quality team and 5 individuals (AAA is actually combined technically with another district).

It is unfair to compare the performances of the the A and AAA. St. Joe's has a graduating class about 35 students. The coach is excellent (team has won states 3 of the past 6 years) and xc running in District 6 on a per capita basis is really, really strong. Central Cambria routinely wins in AA. Penns Valley (just about 10 miles aways from St. Joes and St. Joe's has plenty of students that should be going there) took 1 and 2 in the boys A race with Colton Sands running the third fastest time of the day. State College took second in the girls AAA race.

It is an amazing feat to win and to win with only five means the coach and team are doing something right.

This is an extremely ignorant comment. The single A schools usually have graduating classes of 50 or smaller.

Marlee Starliper, AA runner, had run the fastest times of the day the last 3 years, breaking course records. There was a single A boys team last year, Jenkintown, who beat all AA schools and went 6 overall last year. Penns Valley teammates went 1 and 2, Colton Sands running the 3rd fastest time of the day.

These schools usually barley have a JV team because of sizing. Most A schools have difficulty even recruiting because of the amount of other sports that take away from the program.

A and AA are not a complete joke, all those kids are highly deserving of everything they get.

Ilovetorun557 wrote:

This is an extremely ignorant comment. The single A schools usually have graduating classes of 50 or smaller.

Marlee Starliper, AA runner, had run the fastest times of the day the last 3 years, breaking course records. There was a single A boys team last year, Jenkintown, who beat all AA schools and went 6 overall last year. Penns Valley teammates went 1 and 2, Colton Sands running the 3rd fastest time of the day.

These schools usually barley have a JV team because of sizing. Most A schools have difficulty even recruiting because of the amount of other sports that take away from the program.

A and AA are not a complete joke, all those kids are highly deserving of everything they get.

+1. Many of these small school teams are legit. And many don’t understand just how small some of these schools are. It’s impressive.

As a coach in the PIAA, I can say that this is definitely not the first time a team has run as a team based on having 5 individuals qualify. It does need to be noted that the PIAA does have to approve them as a scoring team and it is noted in the championship program.

This is the first time such a squad has won.

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

Ilovetorun557 wrote:

This is an extremely ignorant comment. The single A schools usually have graduating classes of 50 or smaller.

Marlee Starliper, AA runner, had run the fastest times of the day the last 3 years, breaking course records. There was a single A boys team last year, Jenkintown, who beat all AA schools and went 6 overall last year. Penns Valley teammates went 1 and 2, Colton Sands running the 3rd fastest time of the day.

These schools usually barley have a JV team because of sizing. Most A schools have difficulty even recruiting because of the amount of other sports that take away from the program.

A and AA are not a complete joke, all those kids are highly deserving of everything they get.

+1. Many of these small school teams are legit. And many don’t understand just how small some of these schools are. It’s impressive.

Yes PIAA teams are made up by classifications. Single A usually has less then 150 males in the school, but most schools only have 50 males altogether (it’s basically the same with females except usually even less). Most AAA teams are made up of schools with 1000+ males in the school. All the powerhouse schools are so amazing because they have at least 20x the amount of kids.

Fred Gwynne wrote:

coach wrote:

Pennsylvania has strong XC programs. I'm surprised that this was pulled off at its state meet.

Coach: PA has a strong AAA XC programs. Single A is a complete joke.

When did Pennsylvania get 1A cross country? When I was in school (very early 90s), only football and basketball has 1A-4A. Every other sport had only 2A and 3A.

old timer from the WPIAL wrote:

Fred Gwynne wrote:

Coach: PA has a strong AAA XC programs. Single A is a complete joke.

When did Pennsylvania get 1A cross country? When I was in school (very early 90s), only football and basketball has 1A-4A. Every other sport had only 2A and 3A.

It was more of a recent change, maybe around 2012

Unlike AL, PA does not allow every District to qualify the same number of teams. Some Districts get more or less based on the number of teams in that classification in that District. For example, District 1 has 8 teams in Class A, so gets 1 team plus 5 individuals; while District 3 has 38 Class A teams and gets 4 teams plus 20 individual qualifiers. This can still mean that some weak teams go from weak Districts, but those aren't keeping a team that would medal/place at States out, it's just some geographic representation.

Ilovetorun557 wrote:

This is an extremely ignorant comment. The single A schools usually have graduating classes of 50 or smaller.

Marlee Starliper, AA runner, had run the fastest times of the day the last 3 years, breaking course records. There was a single A boys team last year, Jenkintown, who beat all AA schools and went 6 overall last year. Penns Valley teammates went 1 and 2, Colton Sands running the 3rd fastest time of the day.

These schools usually barley have a JV team because of sizing. Most A schools have difficulty even recruiting because of the amount of other sports that take away from the program.

A and AA are not a complete joke, all those kids are highly deserving of everything they get.

Goes to show that talent means little in high school, Coaching and hard work/culture are everything

I appreciate your effort to put this out but the answer has to be Yes.

It appears New York does not allow five individuals who qualify for the state championship from the same school to race as a team. Example being last year in the Boys Class D race:

Southold out of Section XI was the only other team to race Shelter Island at the Section XI State Qualifier meet. Shelter Island won the team title and Southold came in second, sending all five of the individuals. On the results from the state meet, it does not include Southold as a team, and for the five runners their school is “Southold - Ind.” They weren’t the only team that had this happen either, Alexander Hamilton of Section I had the same distinction.

But since Indiana rules don’t apply in PA, and PA allows them to score, your opinion is moot. They earned the right to compete. Their “punishment” is not having a 6/7.