The Case for DGS Girls to NXN

by: Marc Alvarez

Late last night the at-large bids for the 2018 version of NXN were released. Immediately afterwards there was backlash over the exclusion of the Downers Grove South girls’ team. Controversy over who gets in and who doesn’t is an every year occurrence, but this year’s snub felt especially egregious. Part of that may be because I ran for four years at Downers South and know many of the fantastic runners still on the boys’ and girls’ teams, but also for legitimate reasons that call into question the entire at-large process.

First we should start off by discussing the actual at-large selection process. The problem is that there isn’t much publicly available information about how the teams are actually chosen, or who is doing the choosing.

It seems, after exhaustively trying to find info on old letsrun threads (never do this), that the only real window we have into the selection process is two paragraphs from the NXN website

AT-LARGE QUALIFIERS INTO NXN FROM THE REGIONALS: A TOTAL OF FOUR AT-LARGE CLUB AND FIVE AT-LARGE INDIVDIUAL BERTHS PER GENDER WILL BE AWARDED. CLUBS PLACING EITHER THIRD OR FOURTH IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP DIVISION RACE AT EACH REGIONAL WILL MOVE INTO A POOL OF CLUBS RECEIVING CONSIDERATION FOR ADVANCING TO NXN AS AN AT-LARGE QUALIFIER. ALL ELIGIBLE HIGH SCHOOL CROSS COUNTRY ATHLETES, INCLUDING THOSE THAT DID NOT COMPETE AT A NIKE CROSS REGIONAL EVENT, WILL BE CONSIDERED FOR AN INDIVDIUAL AT-LARGE BERTH. A COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS WILL DETERMINE THE AT-LARGE QUALIFIERS.

GREATEST WEIGHTING BY THE COMMITTEE WILL BE GIVEN TO THIRD-PLACE CLUBS FROM THE CHAMPIONSHIP RACE AT EACH REGIONAL WHO DEFEATED ANY EVENTUAL NXR CHAMPION IN PRIOR WEEKS. IN ORDER FOR THIS WEIGHTING TO BE EMPLOYED FOR THE THIRD-PLACE CLUBS, THE VICTORY MUST HAVE OCCURRED WHEN AT LEAST FIVE CLUB MEMBERS FROM THE EVENTUAL NXR CHAMPIONSHIP CLUB COMPETED IN THE SAME RACE AS THE AFOREMENTIONED LOSS.

Wish I could tell you why Nike insists on writing in all-caps, but unfortunately I can not. As for the actual substance of the selection process it seems relatively straightforward. The third and fourth place finishers at each regional (California is a little different) are put into a pool. A committee debates the merits of the potential teams and chooses four at-large teams.

The only guidelines we know the committee uses is emphasizing wins by potential at-large teams over automatic-qualifying teams.

Everything else is a mystery. The only person that is definitely on the selection committee is Rich Gonzalez, formerly of Dyestat and now prepcaltrack.com. Everyone else seems to be anonymous.

The mystery leads to confusion and anger, if you don’t believe me I again invite to explore old Letsrun threads.

Eventually we plan on writing a comprehensive history of NXN that will include information about who historically has been chosen as at-large bids, but for now we’ll focus on the Downers South girls’ team.

The DGS girls’ team ended the season ranked ninth in the Dyestat national rankings and 11th in the Milesplit national rankings. They finished third at the NXR Midwest Regional scoring 128 points behind Naperville North, ranked first or second for most of the season, and Yorkville, who has consistently been ranked in the top five.

The previous weekend at the Illinois State Meet DGS again finished third behind the same two teams. The Mustangs battled with Naperville North and Yorkville all season long.

At Naperville Twilight the results held in the same 1-2-3 finish position as they did at State and NXR. But if we go back to First to the Finish, DGS notched a win over Yorkville by one point, finishing second behind Naperville North.

First to the Finish is the first of three DGS wins over automatic qualifying teams. The other two came in the Roy Griak Invitational were the Mustangs took down both Wayzata and Edina, the two auto-qualifiers from the Heartland Region.

So if the Nike selection committee’s official guidelines are to believed, the Mustangs should be in good shape. They have three wins over auto-qualifying teams and their only losses on the season came to the two teams that finished ahead of them at NXR Midwest.

But how do the Mustangs compare to the other at-large teams selected ahead of them? This is ultimately the most important question as the selection process is a zero-sum game with only four spots available.

The Boise Senior Girls have the best resume out of the four at-larges with a win in the Bob Firman Invite over perennial powerhouse and #3 ranked Great Oak. The Braves finished just 12 points out of second place at NXR Northwest and won the Idaho State Meet with 39 points. They have also consistently been ranked in the top ten throughout the year

Niwot of Colorado also had one win over other NXN qualifiers with their win at the 4A Colorado State Championship over Battle Mountain (CO). They also finished second at Nike Desert Twilight behind fellow at-large Boise Senior. Niwot was ranked 20th by Dyestat and 15th by Milesplit prior to last weekend.

The other two at-large teams have significantly less impressive resumes.

Vista Murrieta, out of California, has no wins over other teams that qualified for NXN. Ranked 23rd by Dyestat and unranked by Milesplit prior to the California State Meet, they finished second in Division 1 behind Great Oak.

Vista Murrieta did finish first ahead in the Woodbridge Cross Country Invitational Rated race beating auto-qualifier Great Oak and NXR South #3 Southlake Carroll; however, both those teams raced their ‘B’ teams in the Rated race meaning those wins don’t count as significant wins by NXN guidelines.

The final at-large qualifier was Liverpool of New York. Liverpool is one of the premier cross country programs in New York; their boys’ team has qualified four times, while the girls’ team qualified for the first time last year, finishing 13th.

Liverpool finished 3rd at NXN New York, 2nd by one point to Fayetteville-Manlius at the Section 3 Championships--which meant they failed to qualify for the New York State Meet--and 2nd behind auto-qualifying Claremont (CA) at the Manahattan Invite.

All four at-large qualifiers are certainly good teams, but compared to Downers South it's hard to justify why any of them, much less all four, were chosen above them.

Without more transparency teams looking to receive an at-large bid can only continue to try to rack up wins against auto-qualifying teams. But as this year showed, sometimes that is not enough.