Thoughts on the Cross Country Meeting

 

I’ll start with the smaller issues and build up to the more important ones.

 

An official that worked at the State Meet proposed the backup starter for the State Meet.  My understanding is that the purpose of the backup starter would be to watch for false starts and interference during the first part of the race.  The backup would be standing on a ladder or some other apparatus either to the side of the athletes looking down or out in front of the athletes looking back at them.  While it is true that a false start in cross country is grounds for disqualification, I have trouble imagining that the backup starter would be able to determine with a great deal of confidence who committed a false start.  If you were looking down a line of 50 kids, 100 arms and legs, plus another row of 25 or 30 kids, 50 to 60 more arms and legs, and you see one move just before the gun fires, how confident are you that you know whose arm that was?  Would you be confident enough to disqualify a kid?  The backup starter might be 50 meters or more away from the movement.  I don’t believe that there should be a disqualification for a false start in Cross Country.  An arm or leg twitch does not give anyone an advantage in a 5K race.  If someone does commit an obvious false start, then let’s restart the event rather than disqualify anyone.  That being said, I fully agree with the decision to take no action on this proposal.

 

The date of the first contest was moved back from the 3rd Wednesday after practice begins to the 3rd Saturday after practice begins.  I agree with this move.  A couple years ago when we were finally allowed to move the start of our season up, the logic behind it was to get the athletes more practice time and conditioning before allowing them into a competitive environment.  This move provides for three full weeks of practice before the first meets can take place.  Before, to have 14 days of practice in, athletes would had to have practiced on both Saturdays and not missed a day.  This provides for 15 days of weekday practice, and an opportunity for 2 more on Saturdays if those days are needed or desired, before the first meet takes place.

 

The move to four regions will likely be a positive one that may advance more teams to the State Meet.  It is possible, however, that it could actually advance fewer.  I crunched some numbers, aligning the regions just as track was aligned this past year (combining A and AA, of course), and it came out advancing one less team than we had with five regions.  Of course, the WVSSAC has not even discussed what the realignment would be yet, and I doubt it will precisely follow the track regions.  Personally, I prefer a 3-region alignment.  I spent most of a day aligning and realigning the regions using 2, 3, 4, and 5 region set-ups.  Unfortunately, at the time I did not have a map of school locations.  All I had was a county map.  My goal was to provide a regional setup that had a geographical, number of team, and power balance.  The power balance is less of a factor since, in theory, the power regions will rotate over time.  I thought I had nailed one pretty good.  All three regions had the same number of competing schools or at least within one.  The number of complete teams was similar.  I then broke out the individuals; only to find that 43 of the 73 ranked A-AA girls at the end of the season were all from the same region.  I don’t mind a small imbalance, but that was way out of whack.  I did finally come up with one that seems to be decent.  It only has slight anomalies in the geographical alignments.  Doing A-AA and AAA separately and drawing separate dividing lines for them would likely solve this problem as well.  My proposal goes as follows:  There will be three regions.  Qualifying teams would consist of the top half of the complete teams in the region rounded up (i.e. 7 complete teams and 4 advance).  The top 15 individuals inclusive of qualifying teams would also qualify.  To count as a complete team for the regional meet, a team will have had to run as a full scoring team on 5 occasions during the season.  They do not necessarily have to run a full scoring team at the regional meet to count.  The regional alignment would be as follows:

 

AAA Region 1:

Brooke, East Fairmont, Fairmont Senior, John Marshall, North Marion, Parkersburg, Parkersburg South, Robert C. Byrd, Wheeling Park (9 Teams, 9 complete girls, 9 complete boys) Bridgeport would enter this region next year.

AAA Region 2:

Cabell Midland, Capital, George Washington, Greenbrier East, Huntington, Hurricane, Nicholas, Nitro, Ripley, Riverside, Saint Albans, South Charleston, Spring Valley, Woodrow Wilson (14 teams, 7 complete girls, 10 complete boys)

AAA Region 3:

Buckhannon-Upshur, Elkins, Hampshire, Hedgesville, Jefferson, Martinsburg, Morgantown, Musselman, Preston, University (10 teams, 9 complete girls, 10 complete boys)

A-AA Region I:

Bridgeport, Cameron, Doddridge, Gilmer, Liberty Harrison, Lincoln, Madonna, Magnolia, Oak Glen, Ritchie, St. Marys, Tyler Consolidated, Weir, Wheeling Central, Williamstown (15 teams, 8 complete girls, 8 complete boys)

A-AA Region II:

Bluefield, Calhoun, Charleston Catholic, Greenbrier West, Herbert Hoover, Independence, Liberty Raleigh, PikeView, Poca, Ravenswood, Richwood, Roane, Scott, Shady Spring, Sissonville, Winfield (16 teams, 7 complete girls, 6 complete boys)

A-AA Region III:

Berkeley Springs, Braxton, Clay, East Hardy, Fayetteville, Frankfort, Grafton, Keyser, Midland Trail, Oak Hill, Pendleton, Philip Barbour, Tucker, Webster (14 teams, 6 complete girls, 7 complete boys)

 

Based on my proposed qualifying criteria, the following would have been the qualifiers for this year’s State Meet (NOTE: This is based solely on the end of season rankings.  Obviously, when you actually race, things come out differently.)

 

AAA Girls

Region I:            Fairmont Senior, Parkersburg, East Fairmont, Parkersburg South, Wheeling Park – Brittany Zumpetta, Kristen McCabe

Region II:            Huntington, Cabell Midland, Ripley, Capital – Aleacha McClintic, Hannah Henderson, Emily Bailey, Terryn Webb, Lindsey Meadows, Anne Kerns, Mandy Estep

Region III:            Elkins, Morgantown, Preston, Jefferson, Hedgesville – Sonja Tieman

 

A-AA Girls

Region I:            Doddridge, Wheeling Central, Ritchie, Tyler Consolidated – Hannah Robinson, Megan Taylor, Jenna Fogg, Jessie Teska, Kate Merinar

Region II:            Charleston Catholic, Winfield, PikeView, Scott – Jennifer Povick, Megan Lawless, Maribeth Jones, Carrie Burdette, Lindsey Payne

Region III:            Grafton, Frankfort, Keyser – Valerie Peer, Laurel Thomas, Alexa Jennings, Hillary Brown

 

AAA Boys

Region I:            East Fairmont, Parkersburg, Parkersburg South, North Marion, Robert C. Byrd – No Individuals

Region II:            Cabell Midland, Woodrow Wilson, Ripley, George Washington, Spring Valley – Bobby Johnson, Casey Fuller, John Thompson

Region III:            Preston, Jefferson, University, Elkins, Buckhannon-Upshur – John Windle, Matt Rouzer

 

A-AA Boys

Region I:            Williamstown, Ritchie, Liberty Harrison, Wheeling Central – Justin McEldowney, Jesse Templeton, Sam Hall, Chris Weaver

Region II:            Ravenswood, Scott, Charleston Catholic – Justin Bossert, Wes Snodgrass, Kyle Lester, Matt Null, Zack Noel, J.D. Love

Region III:            Braxton, Grafton, Frankfort, East Hardy – Ian Beckner, Preston Simmons, Wayne Ridgway

 

In all, we would have had 14 AAA Girls Teams, 15 AAA Boys Teams, 11 A-AA Girls Teams, and 11 A-AA Girls Teams.  In addition, we would have had 10 AAA Girls Individuals, 5 AAA Boys Individuals, 14 A-AA Girls Individuals, and 13 A-AA Boys Individuals.

 

Obviously, this alignment isn’t perfect.  Someone is always going to feel left out.  However, by lessening the number of regions and spreading them out and by increasing the proportion of teams advancing, we greatly increase our odds of getting the best teams and individuals to the state meet.

 

Unfortunately, all indications from Butch Powell were that he would not even present a 3 Region proposal to the Board.  He cited drive time to get to the regional sites as the main reason for this.  They do intend to go to four regions.

 

Related to going to four regions was the decision to increase the number of individuals that automatically qualify from 8 to 10.  This keeps the total number for each division at 40 (currently 5 regions and 8 individuals, moving to 4 regions and 10 individuals).  To be honest, I was afraid this might slip through the cracks, but it was met with no resistance and was passed unanimously.  To me, it was one of the easiest decisions that they could make.

 

There was a great deal of discussion regarding the shortening of the season by moving the State Meet up a week.  The WVSSAC receives a lot of bad press and a lot of phone calls when there are scheduling conflicts such as the State Cross Country Meet crossing paths with the regional soccer games.  The consensus of the committee was that moving the meet would provide even more conflict.  The Regional Cross Country Meets would then be held at the same time as the sectional soccer games, which would involve more kids and would not provide the opportunity for teams to try to schedule their starting times around the meets.  It would also result in the movement of many invitationals, or even worse, the loss of invitatationals, which for many schools is the only revenue that Cross Country brings.  At the end of the discussion, it appeared that Butch Powell and Gary Ray would not be recommending that the season be shortened.

 

The committee voted 5 to 4 to move the State Cross Country Meet back to Elkins.  There were presentations made by both Elkins and Mineral Wells.  Both proposals had many good elements, and I’m sure both would put on enjoyable events.  From my perspective, though, it seemed obvious that Mineral Wells brought more to the table for the athletes and the school administrations.  They provide two free rooms to qualifying teams.  They provide a free room to qualifying individuals.  They provide a free dinner the night before.  They provided the meet’s first ever profit last year and would be duplicating that feat this year.  The two largest attendance figures ever were in the last two years (breaking the record set when the meet was at Williamstown).  They provided a “goody bag” to runners this year that included Thermax Gloves, Coolmax Socks, a Running Log, and a water bottle.  They can park up to 5000 vehicles.  They allow spectators to go wherever they want on the course to watch.  I found the Mineral Wells package to be equal or better than the Elkins package in all but a couple areas.  The Elkins Award Ceremony is top-notch.  Mineral Wells improved their ceremony this year, but was still well behind the Elkins ceremony.  The Elkins package also offered something called “Regional Hosts” which are people that would serve as contact points for teams coming from other regions.  These Hosts would help get hotel reservations, dinner reservations, driving directions, etc. for those that are not familiar with the area.  Properly utilized, this would be an excellent addition.  Elkins would also have been offering a “goody bag,” but it was not going to be items for runners.   Elkins did also commit to alleviating one of the serious problems of the past, which was the parking situation.  They will own the entire D & E campus that weekend, and they say that this will correct the parking situation.  The Elkins course is also more viewer friendly for those that do not wish to move around.    The Mineral Wells course is more open to spectators that wish to get to different parts of the course.

 

Much of the debate centered on the courses.  Some members of the committee desired a more challenging course while others preferred a course that showcases that athlete’s abilities better. What disturbs me is that at least one of the members that voted for Elkins openly admitted that Mineral Wells brought more to the table or the athletes and the schools, yet that person still voted for Elkins.  The five Elkins supporters do not see the shortcomings of the Elkins course for a championship event.  Let me first say that I enjoy the Elkins course.  It’s fun to run that course.  However, a championship level event should be held at a venue at which you can race from start to finish without being impeded by slower runners or waiting until the course widens before you can pass.  A championship level course should not be subject to changes due to weather.  Elkins does have a backup course, but that course is less than the full distance and also has runners who are 2.7 miles into the race running in the exact same spot at those who are 2.1 miles into the race.  They do a double loop at the end and athletes that are four or five minutes behind may be impeding the progress of the winners.  Lapped traffic is acceptable for NASCAR, but it should not be possible in Cross Country.  The Mineral Wells course is not without its flaws.  I’m not crazy about the two-loop format, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a more substantial hill on the course somewhere, but it does allow wire-to-wire racing with plenty of room to pass.  The course can handle a far greater number of athletes without having to worry about being impeded by fading rabbits.

 

Again, from my perspective, Mineral Wells offered a better venue, a better atmosphere, a better package for the athletes, a better package for the schools, and a better history of a successful meet.  Mineral Wells offered a more neutral site with none of the revenue generated going to a specific school.  All the profits from the Chick-Fil-A Invitational were being pumped back into the State Meet to provide the kids with the best possible experience. 

 

I’m sure Elkins will do a nice job with the meet, and I hope they surprise me by exceeding what Mineral Wells has accomplished, but I fear we’ve made a mistake and it will take a step backward for the sport of Cross Country and possibly inhibit its future growth.