Here are the minutes and highlights from a busy end of season meeting at the NJSIAA offices. These decisions are made by way of committee, which includes coaches from around the state and varying school sizes as well as meet officials. There were some major changes, most of all with the Meet of Champions.
Highlights
The official minutes can be found below.
Meet of Champions Advancement Changes
The outdoor model for advancement will be applied to the indoor season moving forward. The top three place winners from each event move on and then 12 wild cards from all groups combined will be selected. More official rules language on this to come.
Meet of Champions Field Day! Two Day Schedule Changed
Saturday will be an all day field event day for the boys and girls. The triple jump will also join the events list with the high jump, shot put, pole vault, and long jump. Then Sunday will be every track event for both boys and girls in one session.
No More "Double Final" in Prelims - Snaking
The preliminary seeding for the 55 meter dash and hurdles has had the last heat seed as the fastest of the bunch, now they will snake the heats so the fastest have the center lanes throughout.
Meet Dates Released for 2020
**Note that the Meet of Champions is Saturday and Sunday, not Friday and Saturday as incorrectly listed in the minutes sent out.
Other Notes
- Meet of Champs Polish: Announcing seeded heats and finalists, potential award podium, time schedule to be released.
- I suggested to have a 'Seeds Check' period the day after NJSIAA meets close. The entries will be public during this time so coaches can get extra eyes on the seeds and catch any potential problems. Entries themselves will not be allowed to be changed at this point, this is solely to catch any seeding issues so they can be fixed before shipping to the NJSIAA. For example if a mile conversion wasn't applied to a 1600m entry, it is a ton of information for one set of eyes so the more the better.
- Extra Warm-Up for high jump and pole vault athletes skipping multiple heights, see minutes.
- Password Protect: The minutes say I suggest a password to the entry procedure, that was actually presented by Ed Colona to help deal with Public Schools entering the Non-Public Groups entry page. Non-Publics will receive a password from the NJSIAA when they send their paperwork in so they can access the online entries. Public schools have no need to enter registration on the Groups page.. they advance automatically from Sectionals.
- More information in the official minutes below.
Official 2019 Winter Meeting Minutes
**Note that the seeding closing times for Sectionals and Groups will be midnight not Noon. This will allow for the new 'Seed Check' the following day before stats after closing make it to the database. It also seemed more popular having closing at midnight rather than during the school day.