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 2019, only 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.