Wild Card Pilot Program Announced for 2016 Cross Country Season!

Nov 24, 2015

On Tuesday November 24th the annual end of season meeting for cross country was held at the Robbinsville, NJ headquarters for the NJSIAA. Among many other topics sent in which are included with the full meeting minutes the committee discussed the requests for more wild card teams.

After positive discussion and working out the logistics they will be adding an additional wild card team that can advance from Group Championships pushing the wild card team total to three. The committee was not interested in taking away qualifying places from any group and each championship will still advance their top three to the Meet of Champions. To make room for this at the starting line the setup for each team will move from four athletes up front and three in the back to three up front and four in the back. In other words each team will have three athletes toeing the line.

In addition to this change the NJSIAA discussed requests for increasing the number of advancing athletes at the Sectional level. Teams will remain the same but the individual qualifiers were adjusted. With the new pilot program the top ten individuals who have not already advanced as part of a team will move on to compete at the Group Championships. In the past if five of the top spots in a sectional race were taken by individuals who also advanced with their team that only left five spots for individuals to advance without their team.

This is a pilot program for the 2016 season and the starts will be studied during those races to decide if it will stay.

In other related news the regulations for the 2016 winter season have been posted.

Here are the full meeting minutes.