Friday, December 14, 2012

North Coast Section loses one qualifying spot to CA State Track and Field meet

The following was sent to me by Northgate coach Peter Brewer:

"I just confirmed with Hal Harkness that the NCS 4th state qualifier in track has been moved to the Southern Section.  This will take effect for the 2013 State Meet.  This was a recommendation of a the Advisory Committee in 2011, and was voted on by the CIF in 2012.

The rationales were two-fold:  first, the NCS had one more qualifier than other sections of similar size.  This was a holdover from the time when the current CCS was still part of the NCS.  Research has shown that in the last 10 years, the 4th qualifier from the NCS has hardly ever made an impact at the State Meet, rarely making the finals in any event.  The Southern section routinely has had non-qualifiers post times fast enough to make finals.  Hence that move.
Second, the process of the having the at-large time standards ensures that truly qualified athletes move on regardless of place, so long as they post that mark at the section finals.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Southern?! Nooooo

hank said...

CCS has been out of the NCS since 1965, that's a looooooong hold over.

hank

Anonymous said...

Trying to be rational, IF the reasoning is accurate, the change makes sense.

Anonymous said...

NCS has dropped in depth the past few years and is hardly a surprise. However, it is interesting to note that the "impact" to me is nothing more than a poor excuse. Like the 8th place finisher in SS has ever won? We should be looking at ways to get more competition not less.

Anonymous said...

Since we now have at large qualifers no need to take a spot from anyone. Another power play by SS. Total BS IMHO

Anonymous said...

SS needs to split. Too big and too much influence. So SS now gets 9? So kids not making the final still go to State?

Albert Caruana said...

Actually Southern Section got 5 auto entries before this upcoming T/F season. They will now get 6.

Anonymous said...

ben rainero de haan was the 4th finisher at ncs and made the cif finals

ncs 2013 said...

i am literally so pissed off right now this is absolute bullsh*t

Anonymous said...

They should combine SF and Oak sections and only allow 1 participants and even though if their Qualifying mark reaches the at large mark. If it doesn't then that spot should go to the SS.

Peter Brewer said...

All of this has been the subject for discussion for decades among coaches. This is the first such effort at the actual CIF state level to monitor this.

The San Francisco & Oakland section debate will continue, but there are some considerations. California does not have a state association, where there is a top-down authority. The state has instead a federation, which is a collection of separate entities -- we call them sections. And when this Federation was established, almost 100 years ago, the major metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland) were big players. Each section is largely autonomous, and sets its own internal rules. And for the sake of state championship events, the sections get together and their reperesentatives vote on issues. At no point is any geographic section, no matter how small, going to vote itself out of state-wide representation. Each section is guaranteed some sort of representation at the state level, even though Oakland has only 6 schools, and San Francisco has 6 larger schools and about a dozen small charters.

To the credit of Oakland and San Francisco, they do not automatically send off their section winners to the state meet in track. They each have internal standards so that their representative is at least within some sort of competitive band.

The creation of the at-large standard has been huge. This allows the strongest athletes to all advance, regardless of the region.

And to quell any more of the budding conspiracy theorists, this decision was decided by representatives of all 10 sections, and was not some back-room power grab by the Southern Section seeking to expand its already enormous hegemony into the hinterlands of NorCal. You know, the folks who claim SoCal steals our water, and now our qualifying spots.

Anonymous said...

...they DO steal our water!

Anonymous said...

...and our qualifying spots!

Anonymous said...

... And our women!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the explanation of why SF and Oakland are treated as small independents rather than rolled into NCS.

Albert Caruana said...

Please keep in mind that there are many other sports besides XC and TF that are just as much of factor when it comes to determining the section breakdowns.

SSAlumni said...

Why not just have an "A" Standard you have to meet just like the NCAA used to do. Make it really fast and you make the State Meet if you hit that standard during the season. In distance standards are say 1:54, 4:15, 9:07 for boys and 2:14, 4:58, 10:48 for girls. In California you will still get full fields. It could eliminate heats and set up crazy fast finals. You still send the Section Champion in each event to the State Meet as auto qualifier, odds are this person has made the standard anyway. People can then stop worrying about the big, bad, Southern Section taking a spot and will just have to make their athletes run fast, jump high and throw far. Put it on the coaches to COACH!

Anonymous said...

Until SS section runs trials and finals on back to back days ( not weeks ) then they don't deserve another spot! They just time trial the final and don't have to worry about qualifying heats the day before!

CoachTri said...

I wish they would add the 3200m Relay....

Anonymous said...

Well, thanks, Peter, for the explanations. I do appreciate knowing that there was at least representation from all and all voted on this, but be that as it may, it has become a situation of mega-Goliath in the SS.

If the NCS split and CCS was added, then I agree with a poster above who said it is time for the SS to split. There's nothing magical about the number of sections, and BTW, there is nothing magical about the number of athletes who qualify, other than it is a number set and occasionally shuffled around. Something radical could have taken place, i.e., just add an additional berth to SS and leave the one with NCS.

Re: San Francisco and Oakland, they actually do NOT always send their qualifying athletes. In some years in distance events, the qualifying athlete has elected to not participate. That's a shame. Seems the berth should go elsewhere.

Lastly, as SS continue to grow, it is similar to small schools within the section. They simply will never have the depth to compete and win. Sure, they will have some good athletes, but not win in the section. In my section, not NCS, teams of all size compete for the section title. The large schools always win. A small school can win every event, and still not win overall. It's just a matter of numbers.

Now....seems to me about a year ago there was a thread on NorCal Championships and SoCal Championships, doing away with the state championships. Hmmm...just maybe....

Anonymous said...

Be careful what you wish for. In the current configuration, the Southern section actually doesn't have that much influence relative to the other sections. If it does split, the net effect would most certainly give the current SS more automatic qualifiers. That is, the SS now gets 6 automatic qualifiers. If it splits into 3 sections (to give each new section ~130 schools, which is the same as the NCS and CCS), then those new sections would assuredly get at least 3 automatic qualifiers. So now, instead of 6, the SS gets 9.

What most people don't realize is that this change doesn't really give the SS an extra spot since they typically have an at-large qualifier in most events. So, many of the 6th place SS finishers already qualify for the state meet.

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