CCS view on Mills XC Meet

Dear CCS member schools: 
It has just come to our attention that Mills College is hosting a cross country invitational meet this Saturday, 
September 13, 2008. Apparently Mills College initially intended to have a high school division of the meet, 
but when they found out they could not, as a college, host such an event, they changed it to an “other” division.
Just to make sure everyone is clear:

1. High school teams and/or student athletes representing their high school, cannot compete in this “other” 
division of the Mills meet since it does not meet the CIF requirements for being a high school sanctioned 
event (it must be hosted by a CIF member school and this meet is not).

2. This means that CCS member schools may not pay for entries from your cross country school or booster 
funds; the high school coach cannot submit entries or coordinate entries;, no school uniforms can be worn, 
no school transportation to the event can be provided and the high school coach cannot be there at the meet. 
3. As you know CIF does allow for individuals to run unattached during their high school season in “outside” 
(non-CIF) competitions. However, since this is a cloudy event at this time, my advice is to discourage your 
individual cross country runners from participating at all. Remember unattached means an individual person 
entering some meet completely on their own in representation of no one but themselves. If your coach had 
already submitted entries or paid entry fees and now attempts to “fix” this by backing out of that part, but 
the student still participates, I think the “intent” of that and the spirit of the rule makes such participation 
very suspect and could result in sanctions against the individual athlete and/or school program. Mills began 
by inviting high school teams to enter…..just changing the name to not say “high school division”, doesn’t 
necessarily fix the problem.

Please make sure that you carefully follow both the spirit and the letter of the law in this case so you do not put 
your cross country athletes or team in jeopardy of being sanctioned for participation in this illegal high school meet.

Nancy Lazenby Blaser
CCS Commissioner