It has been an interesting past four months for the high school cross country community! Since its start three years ago Nike Team Nationals (NTN) has been a boon to the sport, putting the top teams from around the country on a national stage, but for better or worse it has been the source of great controversy as well. Perhaps as is the nature of things when a selection committee chooses who gets invitations, some felt the criteria for qualifying was unclear or that some teams who deserved bids were left home.
In response, just before the NTN meet in December, a group came forward to introduce a rival national championship meet called BorderChallenge XC Nationals. This new championship proposed to eliminate the selection committee and host regional qualifiers around the country, offering teams a straight-forward and non-subjective path to the “national championship” meet. The effort was lauded by some and disparaged by others.
Now things are about to get very interesting. Nike has officially announced today what track & field insiders have heard speculated upon for the past week: they will scrap their selection committee in favor of qualifying meets.
NTN will keep its existing regions in tact, with one exception: New York (like California) will exist as its own region. Regional qualifying meets will be hosted for the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Heartland, South, Southwest, and Northwest. Unofficially, it seems California teams (due to the late date of their state championship) will qualify via their state meet, and New York teams will qualify through the Federation meet (a traditional postseason meet featuring the best public and private schools combined into one meet).
The qualifiers will most likely take place largely at locations where other large Nike-sponsored meets are already held, utilizing the meet management staffs already in place. The regional meet locations should be viewed as purely conjecture at this point, since Nike has not released anything official. However, while some venues may still be in question, some seem to be a pretty good bet: Hoover (Great American) will be the Southeast course; The Woodlands (Nike South) will be the South location; and Boise (Bob Firman Invite) will be the Northwest venue, among a few other relatively solidified qualifier locations.
While officials contend that this regional-qualifier concept has been in the making (at least as a possibility) since the original inception of Nike Team Nationals three years ago, it seems that perhaps the mounting opposition from the BorderChallenge campaign may have been the catalyst for Nike to go to this format now rather than to wait and see if the other group was successful in their counter-championship with the qualifier concept.
It is unclear at this point what exactly will happen… now it seems there will be three different regional meets for teams to choose from. In some cases all three series (NTN, BorderChallenge, and Footlocker) will find their regional meets on the same date! When possible NTN officials say they will avoid conflicting with the Footlocker regionals; however, in certain regions this conflict is going to be unavoidable due to state meet scheduling. The Southeast, for example, will be forced to hold all three on November 24 since Florida’s legislature pushed the first day of school later this year, delaying the cross country season for one week (Florida’s state meet will be November 17 this year). Something’s gotta give!
Of course, we will bring you any further announcements and developments on this issue as soon as they are released.
