The Jeffco League has advanced an amendment that would impact the way in which teams participating in regionals are counted.

I am hoping this is the last in a series of articles about amendments going before the CHSAA Board of Control meeting on January 28. The subject of this article is an amendment put forward by the Jeffco League to change the way in which teams at regionals are counted. The amendment in question has been on the Board of Control agenda since that agenda was published; it is not recent in origin.

The text of the amendment reads:

2A, 3A, 4A, 5A QUALIFYING PROCEDURE – 40% of the schools listed in the region qualify for state – all athletes who finish in the top 15 places.

The pros and cons of the amendment as they appear on the Board of Control agenda are as follows:

Pros
• Clarifies before the race exactly how many teams will qualify for state from each region.
• Coaches/Schools will no longer worry about if a school will show up (illness, transportation, weather, not finishing a race issues) or not.

Cons
• Not presented to the Cross Country Committee at their November 23rd meeting.
• May ADD teams to state, but no more than had to be planned for.
• This will result in more qualifiers and more cost for the member schools.

If adopted, this amendment would mean that there would be no collective holding of breath among the regional coaches regarding which schools will show up and finish the race with full teams at the regional meet. The number advancing to state could be calculated beforehand by simply multiplying the teams listed for the region by 0.4 and rounding to the nearest whole number. There is beauty in simplicity.

Sound straight-forward? It almost is.

What the amendment doesn't answer is how to handle the situation of schools adding/dropping cross country after the list of regional teams has been drawn up. Presumably, a "final" list of schools for a region could be published at some reasonable date prior to the meet. But, if we use a "final" list (as opposed to a pre-season list) of teams, would schools with insufficient numbers to field a complete team still count toward the total of teams in the region?

Let us suppose that two regions both have 12 participating schools on October 10 (a hypothetical cutoff date for a "final" roster of regional teams). One of those regions, however, has 12 complete teams currently competing while the other has eight complete teams and four partial teams. If schools participating is the number of interest, then both regions send five teams to state. If complete teams participating is the number of interest, the first region sends five teams to state and the second region only three.

Admittedly, the kind of dilemma presented above occurs more frequently in 2A and 3A cross country than among the larger schools, but it is certainly not out of the question that the issue could appear in 4A and 5A ranks as well.

The Board of Control will need to consider the implications of this sort of question as it weighs the merits of this amendment proposal.