Follow Up:
Two years ago, I provided a detailed case study on the
current two-class system that was implemented in 2017 and the effect it was
having on Cross Country and Track and Field in Division I. Though some of the
embedded pictures are no longer viewable, you can refresh yourself on the
article here before you proceed. Now that we are less than a year away from
reclassification, I wanted to provide a follow up to that original report.
The main defense of the current system with the cutline at ~750 is that, "it would help grow the sport in the smaller division with schools of 300 or less not having to compete against schools that had 900-1000 students." After the first year there wasn't enough data to find a trend but now after three years (in cross country) I was able to at least create a data set with the results of the state meet.