Pennsylvania School Wins State Team XC Title With 5 Individual Qualifiers

That isn't an issue it is a strength of the state. In Virginia they keep uniformity of having 4 regions in each of the six classifications and each region qualifies 3 teams to states so each classification has 12 teams. Even though the regions can vary geographically to large areas setting up miserable commutes for sports that have a playoff. Nevermind the fact that it is hard to create rivalries and interest when you are travelling two hours. Or when you have 3 regions all competing at the same venue.

District 1 is the best wrote:

That isn't an issue it is a strength of the state. In Virginia they keep uniformity of having 4 regions in each of the six classifications and each region qualifies 3 teams to states so each classification has 12 teams. Even though the regions can vary geographically to large areas setting up miserable commutes for sports that have a playoff. Nevermind the fact that it is hard to create rivalries and interest when you are travelling two hours. Or when you have 3 regions all competing at the same venue.

I wasn’t calling it an issue, I was referring to the fact that his suggestion poses issues due to long-standing culture and rivalries.

Given that the women who run for Williams were recruited to run, it seems a little silly that they wouldn't want to compete @ Nationals, or that some runners would have to feel "peer pressured" to race there. Something's missing in your analysis.

Math wizzer wrote:

The only scenario where it is possible is if the 1st and 2nd teams place all runners 1-10 and the next 5 are from the nonqualifying team. It will never happen.

These smaller class races often have schools that don’t field an entire team, even at the qualifying level, so you’ll find plenty of non scorers finishing in the top spots. This weekend, the top three finishers in a Missouri Class 1 girls race didn’t score because their teams ran

Jumbler wrote:

Math wizzer wrote:

The only scenario where it is possible is if the 1st and 2nd teams place all runners 1-10 and the next 5 are from the nonqualifying team. It will never happen.

These smaller class races often have schools that don’t field an entire team, even at the qualifying level, so you’ll find plenty of non scorers finishing in the top spots. This weekend, the top three finishers in a Missouri Class 1 girls race didn’t score because their teams ran

Oooops: To continue...

Something neat and cool happened in the PA State meet and there are five pages of message board losers proposing rule changes so that it can't happen again.

Add this to the list of things that are wrong with the sport.

I feel like that would over complicate things as that would create ~30 different district meets since you’d need to do what you propose for each classification (1A, 2A, 3A). And with some of the rural areas that would create some very large geographical districts. I think the way they do it now, and adding an at large system of sorts would be more fair. But generally the system works well so far. But but there are certainly deserving teams that still get left out of the state meet just because they are unlucky enough to be in a really strong district.

Milesplit rules HS wrote:

Never happen that 15 are from 3 different teams without 1 other team or 6 from one of the teams. If you are that worried about the nearly impossible, cut it to 14.

They don't all have to be from the top 3 teams. It is possible for the 3rd place team to have 5 runners in the top 15 and the top 2 teams to have runners outside of the top 15. In fact I have seen it happen multiple times.

One example where the top 2 teams each only have 3 runners in the top 15 and 4 runners from other teams still qualify as individuals (places, 8, 11, 12, and 13).

1st - 1+4+6+16+18 = 45

2nd - 2+5+7+17+19=50

3rd - 3+9+10+14+15=51

As for the PA situation. Of course the team should be allowed to have a team score at the state meet. They are running the meet with 5 runners. If all 5 finish the race, they should receive a team score. This should not even be a question. They are just "penalized" by not having the 6th and 7th runners and not being able to replace any runners if there is injury/illness. They have to run the 5 individuals who qualified and those 5 athletes have to finish. If not, they won't receive their score. Simple.

You can put mathematically put 5 in the top 11 and still get third.

1,4,5,12,15 = 37

2,3,6,13,14 = 38

7,8,9,10,11 = 45

If you want to get technical, then a team could put 5 in the top 10 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) and tie with the other 2 teams at 40 points but end up 3rd on the 6th runner tie-breaker.

JTFC!! wrote:

You can put 5 in the top 11 and still get third wrote:

You can put mathematically put 5 in the top 11 and still get third.

1,4,5,12,15 = 37

2,3,6,13,14 = 38

7,8,9,10,11 = 45

If you want to get technical, then a team could put 5 in the top 10 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) and tie with the other 2 teams at 40 points but end up 3rd on the 6th runner tie-breaker.

I tried that, unless your seeing something I'm not, there is no way to get all three at 40, one has to get 39 one has to get 41.

Why my posts kept getting cut off, I dont know, but the point I was trying to make....

Schools in those smaller classes often don't field full teams, even at qualifying meets (not just state), so there are a good number of non-scoring runners in the results. I've seen kids finish in the mid 30's score half that in points, and sometimes 2 kids who finish 10 places apart might only have a 2 point score differential. One qualifying race this weekend in Missouri had the sixth place runner scoring '"1." Another school had a perfect score because they were the only team to enter 5 runners.

It makes for strange results.

I was at the meet and my team actually competed against them. No one was mad at them because they didn’t qualify standardly. Everyone I talked to actually thought it was really cool and it made it all the more impressive. Everyone on this message board is trying to change a system that is not broken.

This type of occurrence is once in a life time and will probably never happen again. The PIAA probably have a lot greater issues to worry about then this.

The districts usually work out pretty good. There are some years that there will be a powerhouse team, which might be annoying for all the other districts that get 1 qualifying spot, but that is why there is individual spots. The system works out good, basically the more teams competing, the more spots you have. WPIAL’s are a big deal because that is the district that is most evenly proportioned. Where districts such as 1 have mostly AAA schools, and it’s an enormous deal to win that (but they also get 6 qualifying sports and I think 25 individuals).

Sure it might suck for the team that got second, but they win fairly.

Ilovetorun557 wrote:

old timer from the WPIAL wrote:

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

I apologize for using the word joke. Did not mean to insult teams or individuals. I was trying to respond more to the comment about PA having strong XC programs. AAA is really strong with some big schools. Single A schools are just really small so they would not fit into the comment of “PA having strong XC programs” There is some big schools in PA. Coatesville, North Penn, Downingtown West , D East, Central Bucks are just some in District One.

You can put 5 in the top 11 and still get third wrote:

JTFC!! wrote:

If you want to get technical, then a team could put 5 in the top 10 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) and tie with the other 2 teams at 40 points but end up 3rd on the 6th runner tie-breaker.

I tried that, unless your seeing something I'm not, there is no way to get all three at 40, one has to get 39 one has to get 41.

Here is one way to do it.

1+2+11+12+14 = 40

3+4+5+13+15 = 40

6+7+8+9+10 = 40

That works fine for some states, but not others. Geography and the spread of population can make that pretty unreasonable to accomplish, and at the end you are still say that the "Top X teams out of Y are making it to state" with the same proportions, so you aren't really changing anything beyond making teams travel further and affecting which teams are competing alongside which other teams for the same proportional allocation - which serves no purpose unless you "seed" each state qualifier based on how strong each team is that year, which would only work for a state built like Iowa or a very small state like Rhode Island or Connecticut or Delaware (and even then it might not be perfectly balanced). And that's before you get into other issues including but not limited to established rivalries, culture and tradition.

In short it has little to do with how "smart" the State HS Associations are.

JTFC! wrote:

You can put 5 in the top 11 and still get third wrote:

I tried that, unless your seeing something I'm not, there is no way to get all three at 40, one has to get 39 one has to get 41.

Here is one way to do it.

1+2+11+12+14 = 40

3+4+5+13+15 = 40

6+7+8+9+10 = 40

I stand corrected, well done sir!

So NY did change the class breakdown in 2010 and possibly at some other point between 1999 and then. It went from 5 to 4 classes. I think there’s been more than one occurrence where a girls team out of section 2 or section 3 (Saratoga and FM’s regions) large schools didn’t qualify for states but qualified a team for NXN.

Michigan has 3 teams from each regional qualify for the state meet but they have a rule that allows the 4th place team to also qualify. If the 4th place team can place 4 in the top 20 then they also qualify. A Girls team in D1 used it this year, but of course they were didn't win like the PA team. You have to be in the top 15 to go as an individual.

I say it is cool that the 5 girls won. May make PA review their rules for tougher Regionals. Always thought states should have an At-Large team or two.