Debating the State Championship Question

A Call for a Fair States 

Written by Perry King

Kyle's Comments in bolded italics

Think you have a solution for the issue?  Sound off in the comments below!

Sure, life is not fair. Maybe you end up having to run in a bog at your state championship meet instead of getting the fast PR-setting course you expected. Perhaps after a calm placid day for most of the other runners at a meet you suddenly get gusting winds in the final race that perversely swirl around to blow in your face both when you're going out at the start and when you're coming back in at the finish.

But though life isn't fair, that still doesn't mean that after 64 years of New York cross country state championships, that we can't do the right thing and give our harriers a fair shake.

We all know the ugly score. Every year, many of the best teams and runners in the state are left out in the cold from the NYSPHSAA championship, also known as States (as opposed to the following week's state championship for all the confederations, knows as the Federations or Feds). Even in a year like this of almost unprecedented sectional parity among the top ranked teams in the boys' and girls' state XC classes, highly ranked teams like #2 Liverpool, West Genesee, Sachem North, and Maine-Endwell guys, the top-level Penfield, John Jay-Cross River, and Burnt Hills girls, and many other great teams are victims of the sectional musical chairs game that is based on a strange and antiquated one-team-per-section rule for States participation. In most years, an average of close to 40% of the top 10 teams and top 100 runners in a class do not earn tickets to States. Situations like the NY boys Class A this year, with the top two teams hailing from the same section are not uncommon.  Perhaps there could be even worse cases like the 2008 girls Class A, which featured not only the top two teams, but also four of the top 8 from the same section. The Section 2 state qualifier (SQ) for girls A was essentially the state championship race that year back in the 5-class era.

Each year, something new gets added to the frightening saga. This year for the first time ever, both the boys and girls champions at the Federation meet were teams that couldn't earn the cut for the NYSPHSAA championship. Another ouch! The John Jay-Cross River girls were the top team in the merge for their sectional qualifier, but they didn't come out on top in their Class B race. The Liverpool guys were running a little bit behind Fayetteville-Manlius in Section 3 all season. Some might say something good came out of the champs' situation because being shut out of States certainly provided both teams with a potent goad to storm the Feds. But besides the ultimate unfairness of JJ-CR's and Liverpool's treatment compared to their merits, the whole of New York got a raw deal once more at States because some important pieces were missing from the action. A state whose teams are among the preeminent in the nation deserves better than a championship system that snubs top teams and never really brings together all of the state's best runners. We have grown used to a certain deficiency of powerful squads at Feds (the comprehensive States) because teams like Fayetteville-Manlius prefer to gear up for Nationals. Only one state in the nation makes no real attempt today to get all of its best teams and runners together for a championship, and it shouldn't be New York.

Hearing the infamous story of the 1995 Saratoga girls team that finished the year ranked #1 in the nation but yet was unable to get a spot at the line of their own state championship race, fans from other states are prone to saying, "That's cracked! Who made up these rules and do you live in an insane asylum?" Well no, and it's not like the whole state is this way. Although the NY City area PSAL, CHSAA, and AIS confederations do not participate in the NYSPHSAA state championship (see Federations), they do have championship meet setups that make damned sure that the top teams are running. When out-of-staters ask what the runners and parents think about the NY system, all that I can do is shrug. In an era when a national championship meet like the Nike Cross Nationals has room for at-large spots, it is unfathomable that NY cannot change.

But of course the reason for keeping everything in the same-old, same-old format is tradition, which is something that you supposedly just can't mess around with -- except that it has been, many times. Originally, each section had 14 runners per class at States, now it's 12. The number of classes has ranged from 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 and back to 4 again. Sometimes all the runners at States counted in the team scoring, and more usually the at-large runners have been omitted from the team decisions. Usually only one team from each section competes in a States race, but in some years a few sections with a large number of eligible teams have been allowed to send two teams to the starting line. In 1985 for instance, Section 3 teams Beaver River and Onondaga finished 1-2 in the Class C race, and in 1986 a large 15 team group ran in one of the States races.

Tradition can be a great thing, but it isn't always correct, and it shouldn't keep us from doing the right thing for NY's cross country runners. Back at the first States in 1950 (or as it was called, the Intersectional Championship), sectional rivalries were a heated affair and there were only a handful of competitive XC teams in each section. The States setup that was drawn up by the NYSPHSAA committee in the mid 1900s made some sense then, but now it does not. Back then you could read previews in newspapers about the all-engrossing sectional matchups at the state championship, an article type that died many decades ago. Now about the only attention given to the intersectional contests at States is related to which guys and girls will be going home with another shirt.

Tradition is not the only thing at play here.  Each section  varies in its funding for trips to the State Meet.  Sections such as Section 1 spend about 35,000 for the weekend affair, between busing, housing and food.  Other Sections leave the bill up to the individual schools of those who qualify.  Taking this into account, and the current financial straits that some schools now face, adding in extra teams is as much a financial decision as it is one to maintain the status quo.

When a runner says, "We finished 5th at the state championship, but we were only the 11th best team in our class all year," something does not sound right. And when a team runs an average of a minute better than half the teams in its class's States race and still can't find a place there, it's tough to tell the runners that they're just from the wrong side of the tracks, the one that is opposite the #1 team in the state.

The NYSPHSAA championship structure is malleable per sport. Sports that feature two teams in head-to-head contests like football and soccer pretty much require that only the sectional champs can advance on toward the state championship if any kind of sectional structure is to be maintained. Other sports such as tennis allow more than one contestant from the same section, and cross country lines up as many as 40 teams in races during the season if the course allows it, and an average race at the Manhattan Invitational and Federations includes 250+ runners. No recent race at States has had more than the 132 maximum, and the Girls A race this year had 107. There is room for a few more teams and runners to the 82 squads and approximately 950 runners that now attend States. It has been done before, and it can be done again.

Suggestions have been made by some coaches that a sensible situation might involve the combining of the four (NYSPHSAA, PSAL, CHSAA, AIS) championships such as is done for the track championships, and that such an action could free up another week to prepare and qualify the NY runners for national meets.  That is possibly the case, but I'm guessing that persuading four confederations (plus perhaps other states) to make a change might be much tougher than working on one sports body to do the right thing. What format a mega-confederation would take, how it would differ from the current Feds, and where it would be held (hopefully some place centrally located and less than a six hour drive for all participants) would all have to be worked out. But again, pushing for that option seems like a Sisyphean task with many financial issues.

While coaches may seek the extra week to prepare, in the end, we should be very grateful for the situation New York has afforded us, in terms of the post season meets.  While some may argue that adding an extra week to competition may urge the powers that be to split up the dates of the regional qualifiers, I do not think that is the case.  Regional Qualifiers for both Foot Locker and NXN are located on the dates they are now because they are best-fit for ALL states in attendance.  Likewise, we are one of the only states that allows coaches to keep working with their athletes after the Federation Meet.  Many other states ban coaches from having any interaction with their athletes after their respective state meets.  And finally, New York State will never change its' championship schedule because of a non-regulation meet, and nor should it.  As always, there are plusses and minuses with everything.

And it all comes down to money, does it? All the greenbacks that were saved by chopping the XC classes back down to 4 will be jeopardized, I suppose. Even if the accounting books for the NYSPHSAA did show that bringing a few more of the top teams to States would bring financial doom, which I doubt, there would still be a better solution than the current one. Return to the three-class system that NY used for 39 years but reassign the approximately 240 reduced positions to give deserving at-large teams and runners a place at States in the A-B-C classes.

Four is a reasonable number of classes, however, and I'm guessing that funding could be found for a more fair system if the will was there. And since railing about problems without rolling out any solutions is never appreciated, here's some ideas to wrangle over.

Building a Better States 

The first thing to nail down on the issue of a better NYSPHSAA States experience is that one point is sacrosanct: all sections have a guaranteed spot on the starting line of each States race if they have qualifying teams. Currently, 6 of the 88 States team spots are not claimed because Sections 7 and 10 have no Class A teams and Section 8 has no Class D teams. All sections will also continue to send a guaranteed 5 at-large runners to each States race, though again a few sections are sometimes unable to fill the positions due to having zero or only one team in a class.

The second idea is that the States can be made better by insuring that the top 10 NYSPHSAA teams in a class have a chance to meet requirements for earning a States position even if they are running a little ways behind one of the top teams in the state. How many teams could potentially earn at-large spots in a race would depend on both the standards that are set up and each class's competitive scope. But if the at-large candidates were limited to top 10 range teams, generally 3 to 4 teams would be in the running per race, though not all would necessarily earn a spot with their SQ performance.

Selection committee is a very vague term used throughout the article, and for the right reasons.  We don't really have an answer how to make a truly unbiased committee.  As it stands currently for Federation Selection, the two genders process is handled very differently.  In the future, NYSPHSAA will be looking to make "Official Rankings," and what effect they will have on the current landscape is yet unknown.  As rankings currently stand, they are only conversation starters.  If ever given the power to select teams for the State Meet, I would imagine the whole process of ranking would have to be revamped.

The third idea is that quality not quantity is the factor in selecting at-large positions. In the 1980s, Sections were given at-large spots simply for having a large amount of competing teams in a class, even if the at-large team wasn't very competitive and finished far back at States. This year, Section 5 had 76 Class D schools listed in it classifications list, which was 24 more than the next biggest section and at least 60 more than five others sections. But mass quantities of D teams do not equate to excellence, though the East Rochester guys and Keshequa girls at States were both fine teams. But if you are a serious at-large candidate for States, it should be because you are a good team, not because you have 75 clones.

The fourth idea is that the goal is not only fairness, but that adding at-large spots will generate more excitement as SQ non-qualifier teams wait to hear if they are selected for States. And the possibility of earning an at-large spot should not be seen as a reason for any team to "slack off" at its SQ meet in the belief that a selection is in the bag because of past performances. Teams can quickly slip out of the top 10, especially at a time when many other teams are pushing it to the max.

In the brief proposal below I use the quoted term "Top 10" to refer to whatever criteria that a selection committee would use to determine which teams fit the requirements for a top 10 type team. Ideally, I believe that the selection committee would be at least somewhat shielded from sectional politics and I would expect that the Tully Runner speed ratings and performances at major competitions (and possibly some of those state rankings of ill repute) would be  elements in the selection ratings.

So here's the bulleted proposal:

 Keep current base allotment of 1 team and 5 at-large runners per race at States for each section.

 Select a maximum of 5 (and realistically an average of 2 to 3 at-large teams) for each States race that fulfill the criteria of being a "Top 10" team in the class. Set a maximum of 2 at-large teams per section. Criteria: a team would need to be rated in the "Top 10" of its class following SQs and finish 2nd or 3rd at its SQ, with no non-rated team ahead of it if it finished 3rd.

 Add 5 more at-large runner spots to the standard pool of 55 allotted to the 11 sections in each race. The additional spots will go to the top 5 alternates in the SQs, the runners who finished in their SQ's 6th at-large spot. Such runners in the highly competitive SQ races are usually among the top 30-50 runners in their class.

The day of the States race is one of the best of the year for NY XC fans, but it could be even better if we all knew that the 10 best teams and 50 best runners in NY were toeing the line to win their class's championship. And after a year of busting their guts to be the best runners in the state, they deserve one small pat on the back.

There are some good points here, and I would like to expand upon them with an idea for myself.

 Keep current base allotment of 1 team and 5 at-large runners per race at States for each section.

  Allow any team that qualifies 5 runners At-Large to run as a team (Yes, currently that is not allowed).  Any team that qualifies 3 or 4 individuals is allowed to bring their team through their 5th man, and not the displacers in position 6-7.

  Any team ranked highly in the state, who were within a reasonable distance from their superior at their Sectional Qualifier, be allowed acceptance into the State Meet after being selected by comittee.  Teams would have to pay their own way, and no more than two additional  teams per Class would be allowed, while Class A would get four spots to make up for the deficiency from Sections 7 and 10.