The NCAA recently announced a Division I cross country championship for next March – specifically, March 15, 2021, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Yes, that’s right, folks. Cross country in the winter. We (MAAC coaches) had a Zoom call on Thursday morning to discuss the possibilities. There may be a MAAC Cross Country Championship in either late February or early March; details are still being hammered out, not the least of which – where can we run without having to deal with a lot of snow and mud and muck? Winners and top finishers will qualify for the NCAA Championship; there will be no “regionals” as we know it. At least, not in early 2021. You can look up the details of the qualifications, quite frankly I’m too lazy and confused to do it right now. Here’s the thing! I applaud college athletics for thinking creatively to work on restoring the possibility of seasons of competition in all sports. Fall sports to the winter and spring, peacefully coexisting with the spring sports. Shoehorn the winter sports in there somewhere, especially basketball! It’s great; when and if they tell us that we can board a bus to compete, I don’t care if it’s a cross country course under 6 inches of snow, a warm indoor track (neat, but unlikely) or eventually an outdoor track (I’ll be bitterly disappointed if that doesn’t happen). If we can play track, we’ll play track. Tell us when, where and how.
However! Here’s the unique problem with our sport: It’s not a single sport. Duh. We all know that it’s really 6 sports umbrelled into one, which administrators conveniently call “track.” In reality? We’re a fall sport (cross country), a winter sport (indoor track) and a spring sport (outdoor track). Times 2 (men and women). Trying to “move” fall sports to the spring – at least in our world – becomes a square peg into a round hole problem. Soccer, volleyball, even football in the spring? Sure! Book the field, the gym, and away we go! Cross country in the spring? Uh. Wait. We kinda already have a SEASON there now, don’t we? The trend – at least in these parts – seems to be that indoor track will mostly be a non-starter, so let’s plow forward with a late winter XC season. Again, tell me where and when, and we’ll order the biggest meat-hook spikes we can find and have at it. Racing is racing, and it’s been a long-ass time since our athletes could represent Marist in a collegiate race. Stay tuned. A winter XC season may happen, at least that’s what everyone I talk to seems to think. A truncated indoor track season is unlikely, but you never know, there may be a few random meets here and there. Personally? For months now, the only thing I’ve been banking on is an outdoor track season in the spring of 2021 – as I said, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll all be pretty pissed off and depressed at a completely lost 2020-2021 athletic calendar year (hey, it could happen, but I don’t want to think about it). A 2021 outdoor season? It may not be “normal” as we know it but I’d like to think it’s likely. But again, something is better than nothing. Even if it’s cross country in the wintertime. Stay tuned.
4 comments:
Pete, I’ve recently started wondering this WAY too late. As 3 season athletes, did the distance folks count as 1 or 3 athletes for Title IX reasons?
Considering the XC/Indoor dilemma (the latter season being unlikely), it’s an interesting case study in NCAA Mathematics. Similarly, did Lisa D’Aniello Chase count multiple times as a legitimate multi-sport athlete?
Been enjoying the Pandemic Papers!
Conor, that is a really interesting point. When you're looking at Title IX compliance and if the school is offering athletic opportunities in direct proportion to male/female enrollment at the institution, does a distance runner counts as three athletes while a basketball player only counts as one? Since cross country, indoor, and outdoor track count as three separate sports under the NCAA, my guess would be the answer is yes. If a school has similarly sized men's and women's running programs, like Marist, then it doesn't really matter as they essentially cancel each other out. But for all these schools starting to cut men's running programs, that would really boost the school's proportion of women participating in sports while negatively affecting relatively few male athletes. (As a cost-cutting measure, though, it's doubtful they'd save all that much).
Interestingly, men's rowing is not an NCAA sport at all, and everything I've heard about that is because most schools that offer it also have football, which as we know has a huge roster - so there simply isn't room for male rowers, especially in the majority of colleges which are now more than 50% women.
I'd love to hear Pete's perspective on all this.
(Written after Pete’s response post)
I agree entirely Lisa, and think it’s crazy that none of us can say for sure whether or not we counted as individuals or as slots on various rosters.
I have to imagine it is in fact the former, but if not, there are so many potential mind boggling paradoxes even before the pandemic. It’s an incredible thought experiment for those who obsess over bureaucracy and the quantification of the qualitative!
Hope you and the kids are well!
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