11/28/01 - CCS Post-Season XC Meeting

See the attached agenda for a listing of items discussed. Nothing significant was determined except the following:

At-Large Entry To The CCS Meet

We recommended that the Board of Managers allow at-large team entries to the CCS meet under the following conditions.

An At-Large standard will be determined as follows for each division.

1. The median place will be determined in each division for the years 1997 through 2001 (5 years). As examples, if 14 teams ran in the race, the median place will be 7th place. Consistent with the manner that the state determines median place for the State XC meet, we will round up if there are an uneven amount of teams. Thus, if 15 teams are in the race, then the median place will be 8th.

2. We will determine the average team time (total time for the top 5 runners on a team) for the median places for each division for the years 1997 through 2001 in order to determine the at-large standard for the 2002 CCS XC meet.

3. For the years 2003 and later, the at-large standard for each subsequent year will be determined by adding to the prior years total times and dividing by one additional year. Thus, the standard for 2003 will be based upon a 6-year average, the standard for 2004 will be based upon a 7-year average, etc.

4. All teams that use the Crystal Springs course for their league finals, must run under the CCS at-large standard for their division in order to qualify for the CCS meet as an at-large entry.

5. Teams that do not compete at Crystal Springs for their league finals will compute the average difference between their league-meet team times and their CCS-meet team times for a 5-year period as follows:

a) Separate computations will be made for the boys and the

girls.

b) The differential computation will be done on an overall

basis rather than on a division by division basis. As

an example, if the MBL had 5 girls teams that ran in the

CCS meet in a specific year, then the differential

computation for that year would be be computed for those 5

teams and applied to all divisions from that league.

c) Unlike the Crystal Springs at-large standard, the

differential average will always be a 5-year average.

The computation for 2002 will be based upon the years

97-01, the computation for 2003 will be based upon the

years 98-02, etc.

6. Here is an example of how the at-large standard would be computed for a boys division 1 team for 2002

1997 Median Pl = 6th 84:41

1998 Median Pl = 5th 85:55

1999 Median Pl = 6th 88:49

2000 Median Pl = 5th 85:06

2001 Median Pl = 8th 85:57

Ave 86:06

As per this example, a division 1 team that runs its league finals at Crystal Springs would have to run under 86:06 at their 2002 league finals in order to qualify as an at-large entrant.

The MBL and MTAL compete on the Toro Park course, the SCCAL competes on the Mt Madonna course, and the PSAL competes on the Coyote Hills course for their league finals. These leagues must compute a 5-year differential average and submit it to the CCS office in order to be eligible for at-large consideration. A mythical computation will be made to show how this would work.

Toro Park Crystal Springs Difference

1997 Ave 88:00 87:40 0:20

1998 Ave 87:30 87:10 0:20

1999 Ave 88:10 88:00 0:10

2000 Ave 88:00 87:50 0:10

2001 Ave 88:15 88:00 0:15

Under the above example, we can assume that 5 teams each year qualified for the CCS meet. The average team time is for those 5 teams each year. The average difference is 15 seconds. This time would be added to the Crystal standard for division 1 of 86:06. Thus, the Toro Park standard for a division 1 team to qualify for a 2002 CCS at-large berth would be 86:21.

7. This rule will primarily affect the WCAL because they traditionally have many very good teams, especially the girl teams. Four of the eight girls teams that will be in the new WCAL qualified for the 2001 state XC meet and 6 of them had high finishes at the CCS meet. However, if they had been in the new league for 2001, two of them would not have qualified for the CCS meet under the normal qualification standards. The Serra boys in 1998 might have been able to win the Div 2 CCS meet but they could not qualify for the CCS meet because their league was so strong.

8. We are saying in effect that if you are not good enough to qualify for the CCS meet by finishing in the top half of your league but are good enough to finish near the top 50% at the CCS meet that you can run in the CCS meet.

Sanctioning of XC Meets

We discussed the possibility of asking the Board of Managers to change the sanctioning rule so that no sanction would be required for meets for which no entry was charged and no awards were given. The coaches decided to not pursue this issue as it was believed that the Board of Managers would not grant such an exception.

State Meet At-Large

We voted to recommend to the CCS Commissioner that she propose at the next state meeting that the at-large rule be allowed for only those sections that have a 3-year history. The reason for this recommendation was that a less-than-three-year average could lead to unfairness to other sections. If more teams meet the at-large standard than there are available at-large berths, the teams farthest under the at-large standards get the berths. If a section has a short history and there are adverse weather conditions for the history year, as happened for 2000 in the NCS, the differential is unfairly distorted. As an example, the NCS got 23 at-large berths to the 2000 state meet at the CCS got one. The NCS is a good section but not nearly that good in comparison to the CCS.

We also recommended that the differential computation used to convert section meet times to the State meet at-large standard be computed on an overall basis rather than on a division by division basis. This includes more teams in the computation and gives us a better comparison between the section meet and State meet courses.

As an example of the problem that we are trying to correct, the CCS conversions for 2001 for the girls was 3:05 for division 1, 2:14 for division 2, 1:53 for division 3, 1:57 for division 4 and 2:36 for division 5. If we had computed the difference on an overall basis, the difference would have been 2:18 for each division. This is more realistic. Inasmuch as the team times should be slower as the division number increases, we would expect that the difference would increase in proportion to the team time. The average team time for a girls division 1 team was 100 minutes and 109 minutes for a a division 5 team. If the division 1 team runs on average 3 minutes slower at the state meet (because of the difference in distance run and the terrain of the course), then we would expect that the slower division 5 teams would run 9% or 16 seconds slower at the state meet than the division 1 teams. But, that is not the case for the CCS. The difference for the division 1 teams is 3:05 and only 2:36 for the division 5 teams. The cause of this discrepancy is probably due to division 1 team having one or two girls running poorly at the state meet (illnes?). Since so few teams are included in the average, the average is distorted. However, if we include all of the teams in the section in the average, the odd-ball performances that distort the average will be mitigated somewhat.

Number of Automatic Berths For The Southern Section

Presently, the Southern Section gets 4 of the automatic berths to the state meet out of 20. This amounts to 20% of the berths but they have 40% to 50% of the schools in the state. We discussed whether we should recommend to the CCS Commissioner the possibility of giving the SS two more automatic berths. The consensus of the coaches was that we should not do so. The coaches felt that it was up to the SS to consider breaking up into smaller sections and getting two teams for each new section. The coaches felt that the SS could mitigate its under-representation through the at-large process.

CCS Meet Problems

Two problems were noted -- the lack of a para-medic at the meet and runners jogging on the course.

We did have an ambulance at the meet. However, it was not staffed with a para-medic. We discovered the problem when a girl collapsed and the workers with the ambulance told us that they were not qualified to give her an IV.

Although the pre-race instructions stated that runners could not run on the course after the start of the first race, many runners did run on the course. No meet official stopped them from doing so. This could have led to interference with runners in the various races. The coaches believe that the non-running on the course should be enforced except that runners could jog the first mile after the runners in each race complete the first mile of the race.