Case Study: Follow Up on Current Two Class System

Data:

The first set of data is the Year over Year Total Number of Schools that Qualfied a runner or team to the state meet:

Division 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Large Boys 42 37 37 52 52 48
Small Boys 43 43 48 46 43 34
Large Girls 39 37 35 44 48 47
Small Girls 47 48 49 40 43 39


Next, the number of unique schools who qualified as a team to the state meet: 

2014-2016 2017-2019
Large Boys 33 38
Small Boys 33 37
Large Girls 33 35
Small Girls 39 33


Last, the number of unique schools who qualified any runner (individual or team) to the state meet: 

2014-2016 2017-2019
Large Boys 55 78
Small Boys 71 63
Large Girls 52 66
Small Girls 72 63


Analysis:

As previously stated, the split that occurred in 2017 did not factor in schools that do not participate at all thus creating an uneven split. When 50 or so schools from 760-1000 moved up to Large Division, some were able to compete thus you see an increase in Large Girls and Large Boys unique qualifiers. In small division however, after the 50 schools moved up, there's little evidence to show that after three years the smaller schools are clamoring at the opportunity to compete in this less competitive division. In fact, in some regions, the competitiveness has actually declined.


Evidence:

In Region 4 Small, there were 4 girls teams who scored as a team at their region meet in 2017. In 2018 and 2019only 2 girls team scored. As a result, hey automatically qualified for state while no other school could field a team of 5 girls to grab the 3rd spot. According to the TSSAA, there are 16 schools who are assigned to this region, 9 who are declared "participating" for 2019, but only 6 competed at the region meet this season. (Click on dates to jump to results)

Meanwhile, in Region 5, as stated in my previous article, in 2017:

"LEAD Academy qualified out of Region 5 automatically being one of only 3 teams to run a region meet with 5 runners but only 2 runners ran at the state meet. Their top runner at the Region meet finished 24th overall so neither runner would have qualified as an individual had they not qualified as a team."

LEAD has now qualified 3 years in a row by default in this way and in 2019 again did not show up with 5 runners to the state meet. So in some way the rationale defending the cutline was correct. A school like LEAD that has less than 500 students doesn't have to now compete against schools that have almost 1000 students to qualify for state, in fact they don't have to compete against anyone at all.