TO: CCS BOARD OF MANAGERS

FROM: NANCY LAZENBY BLASER, CCS COMMISSIONER

DATE: OCTOBER, 2001

SUBJECT: CCS TRACK PROPOSAL

The staff believes that our current structure for our track meet is not reflective of our mission of providing championship level competition at the conclusion of regular season play.

Currently we have two subsection meets (North & South) that begin the CCS Track Meet. Those are held on the first Saturday of Track Championships at two different sites.

The next Saturday we run a full day of semi-finals.

The next Friday we run the finals in all events.

The number of scratches and no-shows for the Sub Section meet has called to our attention that this has become more similar to an all-comers meet, where many runners are entered who did not qualify, but are put in as alternates. This occurs as the better runners scratch out of events to concentrate on their best events in the coming weeks of meets. We have documentation from the north showing these numbers to be very high

(# scratches: Girls 76/ Boys 62; # no shows: Girls 44/ Boys 42. While we do not have this data in the south because of the way they do their entries, we believe the numbers and the issues to be similar.

My issues are three-fold:

• Running the two sub section meets takes a lot of school and section resources. We need these same folks to continue on the next two weeks to help us run the semi's and finals and not many will/can/want to commit to three weekends in a row.
• We believe the sub-sections are not championship competition. Coaches in many cases are filling spots with alternates who didn't qualify in that event, but who just want to run. It has become more of an all-comers meet than a championship.
• The sub-sections, as all-comers meets, put top runners (those who might have a chance to place in the section or even qualify for the state meet) at risk for another opportunity for an injury in a meet that doesn't really mean anything, or as I believe, is unnecessary.

Therefore, the staff with assistance from several top track coaches in the Section, as well as our Track Chair, Ken Johnson and Steve Filios, our CCS Track Meet Director, have proposed the following changes to the CCS Bylaws. (see attached)

1. Eliminate the sub-section meet and have kids qualify directly from the league to the CCS Semi Finals basically using the same formula.
2. The current entries to the sub section are 48 (24 no & so respectively)--we propose entries from the league to the semi-finals to be a total of 32 plus additional competitors who meet the current at-large condition.

We believe we can better manage our track resources in running this format and provide a championship experience that means something and includes all the competitors who should be there.