Last season, both the Tufts men's and women's cross country teams won automatic bids to Nationals with strong finishes at the Div. III New England Regional Championships.
This season, though, it could take more than a late-season peak to get to the sport's biggest stage.
Changes to the Nationals selection process, approved by the NCAA Div. III Track and Field Subcommittee last winter, will go into effect this season.
Since 1996, the 25 bids to NCAAs were allotted between eight regions before the start of the season, based on past performance at Nationals from teams within that region. Strong regions-like New England-were rewarded year after year.
This year, however, the Nationals field will expand from 25 to 32 teams, filled by 16 automatic qualifiers and 16 at-large bids. The top two finishers at each Regionals meet will receive an automatic bids, and the remaining 16 slots will now be filled by at-large bids, rather than being awarded based on a region's historical strength.
In New England, which has been a strong region in both men's and women's cross country in recent years, the reaction to the new changes has been mixed.
"The old system wasn't perfect, but it wasn't terribly flawed," said Ethan Barron, the Tufts men's cross country coach. "Anytime you're using historical data to predict future trends, you will have an accurate sense of the trend, but not a guaranteed predictor of what will happen again."
Pete Farwell, Williams' men's cross country coach since 1979 and women's coach since 2000, is cautiously optimistic.
"It's a mixed blessing," Farwell said. "We were actually happy with the previous format."
Since 1996, a team's selection to Nationals was based solely on its performance in one of the country's eight regional meets. Each region received a set amount of bids to the National meet based on past performance of its teams at Nationals.
"You [were] rewarded for or punished for how your region did the year before," said Erik Nedeau, the Amherst men's and women's cross country coach.
Nedeau noted that if extenuating circumstances, like a top runner getting sick prior to the race, caused fluke finishes among the best teams in a region, that region would lose bids the next season, a flaw of the old system.
The system has potential benefits and drawbacks for NESCAC teams, and the help/harm factor is entirely situational.
The top three teams at Regionals last season in the men's race (Tufts, Keene State, and Wesleyan) earned the bids to Nationals. Williams had taken second at the NESCAC Championships only two weeks prior, but a bad day at Regionals landed the Ephs in fourth and out of the National meet. Had there been an at-large bid system, the Ephs would have been a clear choice for Nationals.
"I tell that to our team," Farwell said. "I'm almost sure we would have been in at-large."
However, the New England Region could fall victim to the new system if the region loses one of its bids. For the past three seasons, the New England Region has had five bids to women's Nationals, and all five have gone to NESCAC schools.
With the new rules, however, a team placing fifth in the New England Region and fifth in the NESCAC could lose an at-large bid to another region where another school had better regional and conference finishes.
"It's just going to be interesting to see how the teams are chosen because that's where there's a lot of gray area right now," Nedeau said. "There are certain regions that are really strong and other regions that are not quite as strong. It's going to be interesting to see how the committee makes their decisions."
The new system opens the door for considerably more subjectivity, as members of the Track and Field Subcommittee will meet prior to Nationals to distribute at-large bids. The criteria will include performance at the Regional meet and late-season meets, head-to-head competition with teams already in the championship field, and gap times between a team's top runners.
The changes in the system are more sympathetic to weaker regions, like the South Region. Under the old system, only the Regional champion traditionally received a bid, but now the top two finishers punch their tickets to Nationals.
Barron expressed optimism that the system could lead to better national competition for cross country, allowing growing programs to gain NCAA experience and attract better recruits.
"With the increased field size, the NCAA is going to get best of both worlds with not only the best teams competing, but also some teams that are on the developmental level also seeing berths to Nationals and having a chance to improve the quality of their program," Barron said. "So over the next 10 to 15 years, we might actually see an improvement in the national caliber of cross country. But only time will tell."
Despite the potential for controversy, the changes seem to be sitting well with coaches across the league.
"You have to make some compromises if you're doing it, and the proof will be in the pudding if this all works out," Farwell said. "I'm hoping it does."
