Tim Host coaches one of the Southwest region's many fine small-school cross country teams at the Academy for Tech and Classics in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Colorado Track XC file photo by Alan Versaw.
Large school cross country has enjoyed the lion's share (plus a little) of media attention in recent years. The time has come to turn up the spotlight on small-school cross country.
So, I'm doing exactly that--at least for the Southwest region.
It took several hours to complete the task, but I created a new "league" in the MileSplit rankings for each of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico. In Colorado and New Mexico, the new league is labeled "Under 1000 (XC)." In Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, the new league is simply "Under 1000."
For Colorado and New Mexico, the new league includes all schools running cross country with 9-12 enrollments below 1000 students. I was not as familiar with which small schools in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada have cross country teams, so I simply included all state association member schools with 9-12 enrollments of less than 1000 students.
It's important to note that we're talking about 9-12 enrollments. In Utah, in particular, many high schools only include grades 10-12, though freshmen are allowed to compete in high school athletics. So, for example, a Utah school with a 10-12 enrollment of 800 students would not make the cut for Utah's Under 1000 list. In that case, it would take a high school of enrollment less than 750 students.
What this means is that it's now simple for those with MileSplit Insider access to rank cross country teams for all schools with enrollment less than 1000 for each of the five Southwest region states. Yes, you can do virtual meets and XC team rankings on this new league.
It also means that, from this point forward, when I write the regional cross country reviews, schools of fewer than 1000 students will be getting just as much attention as the larger schools in each of the five states. It's going to be very simple for me to extract smaller schools from larger schools for the purposes of weekly cross country analysis across the region.
And, that's only fair. A school of 3000 students doesn't necessarily do cross country any better than a school of 750 students, but it's a whole lot more likely that the school of 3000 students is going to show up in regional discussions of top teams. That 4:1 student ratio has some serious implications about the composition of the cross country teams at the two schools.
So, this move is an attempt to bring some measure of equity to the media attention equation.
Will it eventually mean enhanced postseason opportunities for small-school cross country? I'd like to think so, but that remains to be seen. As a coach of a small-school cross country program (school enrollment = 618 for the 2014-15 school year) who has knocked on a few doors, I've learned the hard way that it takes media attention to drive the bus of increased opportunity.
So, going forward, that bus now has a driver. We'll have to wait and see where the road it travels leads.
In the meanwhile, small schools, please enjoy the enhanced attention you'll be getting. You've earned that attention just the same as the larger schools have.
Note: I've made every attempt to accurately include all schools with enrollments under 1000 in the "leagues" mentioned above. If you find a school missing from those leagues, please send me an e-mail at the address in the lower left corner of this page.