Cross Country

Weekly Announcements

September
28

Warm Up
We’ve reached the midway point of the season. It has been great to see so many outstanding performances across the board. I’m eagerly anticipating seeing the rest of the season unfold.

The Start

Regional assignments are now posted on our website. A BIG thank you to all of our host ADs and coaches and for all who indicated interest in hosting this season. Classifications were officially announced Monday afternoon.
- Our office limited until classifications are finalized. It is a game of hurry up and wait. One of the big reasons why is making sure those that we have penciled in to host remain in that classification. There were several schools that changed classifications once again this year.
- There is a great deal of communication with potential hosts the last half of August and the first half of September. Various factors go into the host selection process with the most important being which programs indicated interest on the ADM-Fall forms that ADs fill out and submit to our office. Some other considerations include but are not limited to, course quality/parking/restroom access, which programs have hosted in the past, what part of the state and region past hosts are located in, how many times in the last few years a program hosted, etc.
- Once classifications are set and hosts are solidified, I start looking at maps of school locations and geographic clusters of schools. Maps are populated with the new classifications. Regionals are balanced with the same amount of teams in each regional, or only one more/less.
  - This is the most time-consuming part of the process because in the smaller classes, there are several schools that don’t sponsor cross country or, only sponsor boys or girls.
- Once the maps are finished, our staff and I double and triple check to make sure we’ve got each program accounted for and the 23 regionals with over 600 programs are assigned and listed correctly.
- We load the information into the back end of our website to prepare for publication.
- The last big step is finalizing the race start times. 10:00 a.m. is the target start time.
- This season, 11 of the 12 sites are hosting double regionals. There are a few advantages to this:
  - This provides a better atmosphere with more fans.
  - Runners can see other runners from different classes they may or may not have seen run this season.
  - Better efficiency for ADs and coaches around the state. It isn’t much more work to host a double regional than a single regional and saves about half of the effort other ADs and coaches would be taking on at 11 additional sites around the state.
  - Access to timing companies.
  - For member schools and hosts it is more financially attractive to host a double regional.
  - I chatted with several coaches around the state about this concept, and the overwhelming majority like these reasons.

Cool Down
While it is tough to keep the process to one page, I hope this has been informative and transparent. If your program indicated interest this year but didn’t get selected, next year may be the year.

[Previous Weeks]

Untitled Document

Current Boys Champions		Current Girls Champions
6A 5A 4A 3A 2A 1A	Shawnee Mission East Overland Park-Blue Valley Southwest Wamego Wichita-Trinity Academy Elbing-Berean Academy Quinter	6A 5A 4A 3A 2A 1A	Olathe West Lenexa-St. James Academy Eudora Gypsum-Southeast of Saline Johnson-Stanton County Montezuma-South Gray
[Previous State Champions]		[Previous State Champions]