About

This site is created by Bo Waggoner for everyone to use. It is not affiliated with the NCAA.

The projections are only as good as the season results we have. Huge thanks to The Stride Report, Jonathan Gault of LetsRun.com, and Adam Cooke for compiling and checking results, as well as posts and emails from numerous people with corrections!

Source code

Download the source code and compiled meet results here (see example.py): https://xcquals.com/xcquals.zip

Feedback

If you see something that looks fishy or wrong, please email bwag@colorado.edu with a subject line like "XC Quals - question".

Team names used in results should match the team name on https://tfrrs.org.

You can see some of the info used by the program (replace 2018 with current year):

1. Meet results (women): https://xcquals.com/2018/w/meets
2. Meet results (men): https://xcquals.com/2018/m/meets
3. Women's B teams current counted (my own notes to myself): https://xcquals.com/2018/w/Bteams.txt
4. Men's B teams current counted (my own notes to myself): https://xcquals.com/2018/m/Bteams.txt

If you see a mistake, please email.

Rules - Overview

There are 9 regions. Each has a regional meet. Based on these and season results, 31 teams are selected. Here is the basic idea (more details below):

• Top 2 teams in each region are selected automatically.
• All other teams are awarded one point for each time they beat each of these teams throughout the season.
• Among top 2 remaining teams in each region, whichever has the most points is selected. All other teams are awarded one point for each time they beat the selected team. But if the selected team is the second team from their region under consideration, there is a "push" process described below.
• Repeat (always considering the top remaining teams in each region) until 31 teams have been selected.

First: a point can only be awarded for beating an opponent's A team. An A team is defined as any time at least 4 of the top 7 from regionals ran in a race. (So we only know what the A teams are when the regional lineups are set.) The program on this site does not take A teams into account, except by trying not to include results where an obvious B team was run.

Second, wins are only counted for points if they happen after a certain date (usually about the second weekend in September, in 2018 it is September 7 onward).

Third, if there is a tie for multiple teams with the most points at any time, then some tiebreakers are applied. If Team X has a losing head-to-head record vs Team Y, then we must not select X. If the head-to-head record is tied but team X lost the most recent contest, we must not select X. If head-to-head is not enough to narrow down to a single selection, we go to common (D1) opponents. If Team X has a lower winning percentage against common opponents than Team Y, we must not select X. After that, the team that finished higher at their regional meet wins the tie breaker. After that, the team whose point total was closest to the 2nd-place team in their region. (This program does not use the point totals, so it does not use this tiebreaker.) After that, it is at the committee's discretion.

Fourth, the push process. A team with the most points can "push" in one team ahead of it. So the full selection process is:

• Top 2 in each region auto qualify.
• Award points to all teams for beating these qualifiers.
• Consider both the 3rd and 4th place teams in each region. Among these 18 teams, consider the team X with the most points (breaking ties as above).
• If Team X is 4th in their region, this would be a push. Pause here and try this: Move on and select next team instead. Continue running the entire selection process from there. If Team X ends up getting selected, then this is the final result. Stop.
• But if Team X was never selected, go back to where we paused and use the push. Team X is selected, and they push in the 3rd place team in their region which is also selected.
• If we use the push, then award points for beating Team X, but don't award points for beating the team that got pushed in. Also, do not use the push in this region another time -- once only.
• Continue the selection, always considering the top 2 remaining teams in each region, until 31 teams have been selected. (We can't select 32 teams, so if 30 teams have already been selected, then only consider the top remaining team in each region.)

Official 2023 Qualifying Procedures (pdf mirror) as found on this page as "2023-24 Pre-Championships Manual".

Thanks

• LetsRun.com - where your dreams become reality
• The Stride Report - NCAA XC news and analysis
• TFRRS - official NCAA results
• USTFCCCA - official polls

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