Congrats to All Who Ran In Today's State Meet

[Coach BL]

For my own understanding here:
If my section gets 3 entries to state in Division III. My team places 3rd in my section Div III finals. Another school that qualified in Div II in my Section is better than me AND fits the Div III enrollment criteria for State, then I would be removed from state & they go in my stead.
Assuming my scenario above is correct, how many teams are going to be okay with this?

[CoachB03]

Yes. That is one of the suggestions. The other would be to have every section place all of their teams into divisons that would match up with an agreed upon Statewide CBEDS enrollment number (as is currently the case with D4 and D5).

In my case, I would be fine if another team that was in D3, but ran faster than us over the same course on the same day, were dropped into division 4 and bumped my team. I would prefer to directly run against all of the teams that would be in my division though.

In our section (SJS) we have a superflous Sub-Section meet that could easily serve as the section meet. From that meet, the top 5 teams from each statewide division (if something were to exist) could then run together in one large race the following week, with the appropriate 2-3 qualifiers per division picked from that lot.

I know this much...this particular cat can be skinned in a lot of ways. I also know this....since these boards have been in existence (in any of their incarnations) there is always a debate about the equitablity of the state qualification system. In the past, most of the complaints came from the southern section and went like this, "Why do some sections get an auto berth to state when they have only a very limited number of schools? Shouldn't those extra berths go to the stronger sections?" The current arguement is the flip side of the same coin. "Why should schools that might compete in a smaller division at state be forced to run up against schools that might be close to twice their size?" Both of these points are totally valid. If I'm in the SS, I'm P.O.ed that my quality team was denied a berth so that some school from a tiny section up north (or in the LAS) can come in and get last place at state. If I'm from a small school up north that gets put into D1 by my section, I'm mad that my team has to go to state and get spanked by larger teams.

I don't mean to sound like Debbie Downer. I started the thead simply to congratulate the teams that ran so well. I had a great time at the state meet this year and have a great time every year. I honestly don't mind the current system too badly, but I do recognize that there are some flaws that could be corrected fairly easily.