Eric: I agree that it may be unless to fight an organization like the WIAA that put's little creativity and CC knowledge into our sport. Most of their mode of operation is to be politically correct, expedient and make sure they make money. They could still do all those things and have a better tournament for our sport if they wanted to. They had no problem getting the 5K for girls through when they wanted it despited the big divide in the WCCCA about the change. My(and other coaches) idea of going back to the 8 sectionals for D1 qualifying 2 + 4 wildcards is simple, it keeps good geographic representation, and save the WIAA money and does NOT increase the number of total teams at state(which I feel is maxed out now- D2 and D3 could go to 7 sectionals qualifying 2 + 2 wildcards or 6 sectionals qualifying 2 + 4 wildcards. That could do several things besides saving the WIAA money in not having to pay for at least 3 or 4 sectional sites and timing services and finding good course to host. Another benefit is that the sectional race will be larger and more like state and will favor the teams with better depth and balance.(the fewer the teams the less important depth is). Another big one is there should be no sectional with more than 2 incomplete teams!! The selection committee for the wildcards would be the automatic qualifying coaches in each gender and division since they have no axes to grind since they are already in. Each auto qualifying coach would vote for 4 schools in their division and gender who did not auto qualify and after voting the top 4 or 2 schools with votes would be the wildcards. Votes would need to be in to the WIAA buy the Sunday following sectionals. I also agree that our association is not showing the creativity, strength and cohesiveness that it needs to have to get positive changes done. Until the state meet format is changed it will not be the best meet in the state but a show case of the top 10 teams crushing a group of teams that shouldn't be there.

One last view on this 29% plan is that for sure no matter what your sectional those in the loaded sectionals will be at a much greater disadvantage in accomplishing the 29% with their 5 runners than someone in a weaker sectional so as in this years teams there were extra teams making it to state but they were not always the ones that should have. I would much rather put my fate in 4 unbiased coaches that have already qualified to pick as best they could 4 wildcards(not extra teams)

Eric: a team like Sun Prairie boys this year would have made it with Chad's plan and they being ranked would have some credibility. The odds are however in favor of having teams like the third place finisher in the Kenosha sectional qualifying(as per Chad's calculations this year) . Why? In that sectional only 2 runners broke 17 minutes in the Madison West sectional more like 15 guys. Which sectional would you rather be in to try and get your top five in the top 29%? The 29% runner a Kenosha was about 17:46 where the same runner at the West sectional was 17:16. If all sectionals were even relatively balanced Chad's system would probably work. They are not and unless something changes or we get behind something that really works everything will stay the same. I remember when Marcy was in charge of CC she and our president at the time would get together and make some attempt to balance things out. She is gone and so is common sense. Even if his plan works we won't get more teams so it is dead before we even start.

Eric: you are partially correct on this but the watering down is really enhanced by the bad sectional alignments that are allowing weak to average teams to get to the championship. The state meet should be the best of the best meeting, a clash of Titans at the top if you wish followed by some pretty tough soldiers. Right now its is the top 12 or so teams embarrassing the bottom 8. I like the 20 teams they have now- it is big enough so you better have good 4-5-6 men to win but not overly large even though I think the course is quite jammed in many spots and forces one to get out harder than normal. The 29% assumes that the WIAA will just say ok to adding more teams than 20 and I believe this is a false assumption dooming the 29% plan.

@Marty Bushland 4 divisions at first sounds great but the WIAA will then cut each division as to number of teams that qualify and with the present system of setting up sectionals you will now end up with one more division with problems. It is a separate issue with separate problems.

@Marty Bushland To add to what you are saying Marty there are plenty of fast courses scattered around the state, the Husky Invite is way up north and that course seems to be beyond Arrowhead fast. You look at the girls teams in the top 10 this year at state many of them come from the areas you suggested. Maybe the reason their times are fast is that indeed they are fast but that doesn't mean girls north, east and west aren't fast but the facts speak for themselves. No rater or person on a committee is going to put someone or some team as a wildcard simply based on time. When you come right down to it our top 5 that aren't on teams really amount to individual wildcards. The WIAA could reasonably say that they will only allow 2 out of each sectional(20 not 50) in D1 as there are only 10 medals awarded at state why do we need 50 wildcards. There point is supposed to be not to eliminate an outstanding individual just because they are not on a team and also to make sure we get the top individuals to state. Why can't the same philosophy be used on getting the best teams to state. A very good question I would say.

@Marty Bushland I agree that our result page now is not very good. I go to track talk, athletic.net, and pt timing to get most of my info. We rank, it is calculated, then we look at it and talk about any discrepancies we notice, teams that are missed and again its is mostly head to head. There are some pretty easy and notoriously short course around and most of the coaches know these courses and take that into consideration along with the weather and such. A significant amount of time is spent checking out results and exchanging thoughts. It is not willy nilly as in the past. I would trust a good committee or ranking way above the 29% formula. Keep thinking that 29% of weak may be worse than 50% of strong and as long as the assignments don't take into consideration strength it will continue to happen. However Muskego girls did get shifted out of one power sectional to a very weak one. I wonder how that was accomplished. Yelling and screaming to the right people I am sure. Shouldn't have to do that. Let's not jump at the 29% formula just because it is the only thing on the board now. Let's get something fair and really good that we can get behind and then take it to the WIAA.

I think the 29% proposal does indeed make it worse not better. List me the ranked teams that would have made to state with this proposal. I venture to say that more and weaker teams would now be allowed to get to state. The rankings as mentioned are pretty darn good to my mind. I never felt our team was misrepresented on them whereas the sectional assignments in our area really were out of wack. I personally do not like the idea of extra qualifiers beyond what we have 20 and 16 is enough. I am quite sure the WIAA will not allow more teams than we have and I think the course dictates that. Either balancing or seeding the present sectionals, going back to 8 sectionals and 6 sectionals with 4 wildcard teams picked by a unbiased coaches committee, or even the 5 supersectionals in D1 picking 4, or in D2 and D3 4 supersectionals picking 4. In any case both would preserve regional representation and balance the power. Nobody is going to give someone a free pass to state without competing for it and raters are smart enough and know the courses well enough not to base their rankings totally on times. Head to head is the primary times would be secondary. Looks at the top half of the state results and tell me the rankers did not nail it pretty well this year. Why not the bottom half- well you have your answer with the way sectionals were set up to knock out about 30% of the best teams and replace them with teams that probably haven't placed in the top 3 in an invitational all year.

What can be better than state ranking that have been crystallized out over an entire season by people who research the results, discuss the placements afterwords, and then finally make the decision. The proof is in the top 10 of the state results. Why only the top 10? That's because much of the bottom 10 at state shouldn't have been there based on quality of teams. There is definitely a way to balance things without destroying the geographic representation . I just take creativity and a little time and there are probably more than one way to make it much better than the system we have. We end up shooting ourselves in the foot because we can never get together and agree on much.

The Madison West Sectional has had for about 6 years at least 3 sometimes 4 ranked teams in the sectionals. In the past 3 years at least 2 of those team have been in the top 4 in rankings and final placings. That means than anyone ranked below seven or eight has almost no chance of making it to state even if they are the 7th best team in the state. For many team that make it to state even if they are ranked know they probably don't have the firepower to take home a trophy so just being there is a reward. With the present system that reward is given to usually about a third of the field most which don't deserve it except that they happened to be in a sectional with little competition. What are they doing. Rewarding mediocrity and in some sports creating mismatches at the championships level that are embarrassing.

Another big problem we have in our association was coined by a fellow coach that he heard said about us. I can't repeat or even give an acronym for it but it wasn't good. About the only good thing we have accomplished as an association to improve cross country is the 10 medals and going back to the indoor awards. We fought over the 5K move and waited until the WIAA shoved it down our throats and now we see that it improved the sport and gave us equity that we should have seen long ago. I can almost guarantee that if this association gets behind something totally that we can accomplish many more improvements in our sport. We, like the law makers in our country and state have factions that fight for their own sometimes selfish and petty ideas and never get anything positive done as a result. I know if I was 20 years younger I would run for president(of our association) and try hard to pull everyone together but my time is past to do that and must trust that younger coaches will see what is best for the kids in our sport. First and foremost get rid of the idea that prevails today of giving away rewards to those who don't earn them. Like being forced to give someone who hasn't earned it an A in a class. The association can accomplish a lot by working together if not we will remain the butt of jokes compared to the other associations.

I could almost guarantee that if the association got behind a workable plan with at least 80% of the membership supporting it we could get some positive changes made. I have seen over the years that complaining about inequities in the sectionals has produced results. Strange how suddenly this year Muskego girls were removed from that loaded sectional and sent south which was a good move. Why does it take phone calls or complaints to make things happen that should already be obvious to the people in charge of CC at the WIAA and they could make the changes to make the state meet the premier CC event of the Wisconsin High School CC season. For example in the move of Muskego girls to Kenosha now you have another top 10 team that won't get knocked out of the state meet needlessly in the other sectional and you remove a team that is nowhere near as good as Waukesha West or Arrowhead girls.

Chad just because I disagree with your proposal I applaud your passion and attempt at resolving this mess. It is just that your system would only work if each of the sectionals were reasonably balanced in the talent pool. Many are not so obviously it is much easier to achieve your 29% rule in a weak sectional than it would be in a loaded sectional. For example using your 29% rule the 24th place at Kenosha ran 17:46 whereas the 24 place at the Madison West invitational ran 17:16. We do know that different course have different difficulties but in this case have seen times from both courses during the season they are pretty similar. So the 29% set us up with the same problem if I take my team to Kenosha and run the same times from West we place our 5th man about 18th which easily falls within the 29% at Kenosha but not at West. The 29% just does not give a good indicator of a teams quality. I think KIT ran well enough to deserve a trip to state in some other sectionals as well but putting in the third place team here is definitely not correct even the second place team would not have made it out of any other sectional except maybe Manitowoc.

I think by looking at the xtra qualifiers for D1 which is where we are we see an obvious monstrous flaw in this system. The system does not taken into consideration the major flaw of the sectional alignments -the imbalance of power in some of the sectionals. The most rather hilarious situation this year is that in probably the weakest sectional there is an extra qualifying team Badger just because they were in a sectional where only 1 runner broke 17 minutes and most ran times that would not have been in the top 25% of almost all the sectionals. Sun Praire the other possible extra qualifier was a solid team but lost to Madison Memorial and Verona in their conference meet. Verona beat West Allis Hale by over 100 points at Wisco and beat Kenosha Indian trail by 60 and now your system allows a team that Kenosha IT beat to advance to state while Whitefish Bay, Verona, Madison Memorial, Marshfield and probably Kimberly as well could easily beat KIT, Hale, Westosha, and West Bend West which Verona beat by over 100 points at Lourdes. This system will get more teams to state but many times it's just more teams that shouldn't be there. I feel the WIAA will not allow more than 20 teams and I happen to agree with them on this as the course is overloaded right now. This system will NOT resolve the problems. - I would not vote to have this system. I was suspicious of it before and now I see it's potential of getting more to state without solving the embedded problem. I would rather see 8 sectionals qualifying 2 and then have a committee pick four wild cards. Using the rankings and head to heads any good playground director could pick those teams. Who would they be this year- Madison Memorial, Kimberly, Verona, and Whitefish Bay with Marshfield right in there as well. Those who disagree with me let me know what teams you would pick. All four of these teams were ranked in the top 15 in the state during this season and proved themselves. Everyone one of these teams were in sectionals with at least 3 highly ranked teams with Verona and Madison Memorial being in the sectional with 5 teams that were ranked or had been. #2, #5, #12, #15 and Sauk Prairie that had been ranked as high as 18th. We need to do a better job of seeding the sectionals while keeping a reasonable geographic representation or go back to 8 sectionals and pick 4 wildcards. Football coaches seed their own sectionals, tennis coaches seed their sectional. Our ranking now are pretty darn close and could now easily be used to pick wildcards. I am not in favor of this new plan. It is too complicated and it does not get enough of the best teams to state. You are for sure leaving at least 20-25% of the top 15 teams in the state at home this year and it's not because they weren't good enough it's because the system isn't good enough and is letting kids down that achieved a certain level of excellence. I am not sure the WIAA is trying to encourage that with this broken system.

Here's a good one Eric. The reduction of sectionals would save the WIAA money. Knock out 12 sectionals would save them quite a bit. D1 20 schools D2 16 D3

I think Eric's idea has quite a bit of merit as well and that would keep the total teams at a manageable 20. Go back to the 8 sectionals and after the 16 pick 4 wildcards. A system to pick the wildcards would be the rub. Rankings- the 29% rule?

Also by having the number of teams qualifying to state out of a sectional based on the number of ranked teams in the sectional would force the WIAA to spread the ranked teams around as best as they can and still keep the regional representation since one team from each sectional is guaranteed to qualify to state. How tough can that be? A good playground director or someone at the YMCA could do better than what we have now.

I would like to thank Chad for the massive effort he has put in on this and at least it has brought the problem to the WIAA's attention and it appears they are trying to make some improvements. I agree that anything is better than the thoughtless merely expedient system they have now. My one objection is that in a very weak sectional it will be much easier to get 5 runners in the top 29% and then you just have another even weaker team making it to state. Is there a limit on the extra qualifying teams. The WIAA will not want to many teams. My feeling is that if there is a sectional with no ranked teams then that sectional would be allowed only 1 qualifying team not two. If the sectional has 3 ranked teams then they get 3 qualifying teams which may or may not be the 3 ranked teams as they still have to earn those 3 spots. I personally think 20 teams is enough for that course. There is absolutely no reason to have 2 teams ranked in the top 5 in the same sectional. (Neenah-Spash boys 2018, Middleton-Madison West boys 2018) A third place in those sectionals could probably easily beat champions of at least 4 other sectionals. To qualify when you have the top two teams in the state in your sectional will still be much tougher to get your top 5 in the top 29% than if that same 3rd place team was down in Kenosha or South Milwaukee.