Thursday, October 25, 2007

#1's Wayzata and Eden Prairie Advance;
6AA, System Eliminates 4 Top-10s From State

The state's top-ranked Class AA boys and girls cross country teams survived the abattoir that is Section 6AA to advance to the MSHSL State Cross Country Championships in Northfield on November 3.

Only the top two teams in each Section advance to State, and a fistful of ranked teams in 6AA weren't so fortunate.

The #1-ranked Wayzata boys team beat fellow-qualifier #10 Eden Prairie 45-79.

The #1-ranked Eden Prairie girls beat #3 Minnetonka 25-55.

Out of luck in the "Section of Death" were #7 Edina, 3rd with 87 points, #5 Armstrong, 4th with 90, and #9 Minneapolis South, 5th with 124, in boys competition. Wayzata's #8-ranked girls will also watch State rather than race it after finishing 3rd with 85 points.

Full results can be found on RaceberryJam HERE. Jack Moran's fine site should be the place to go for full results of all 16 Class AA and Class A Sections.

Section 4AA results ... can be found HERE -- #5 Stillwater and the un-ranked White Bear Lake boys advanced; #5 White Bear Lake and un-ranked Roseville Area girls moved on. The #8 Roseville Area boys finished a non-qualifying 3rd as did the #7 Woodbury girls.

Most of the rest of the Class AA and Class A Sections will be contested today.

Opinion ... DtB and this writer have previously noted the short-comings of the MSHSL's State-qualifying system in cross country. I wrote THIS "editor's comment" in Minnesota Running & Track magazine last fall after six of the top-13 teams in boys Class AA were left out of the State Meet

DtB reported on the MSHSL's Section re-alignment HERE last March and anticipated that it alone would not ensure a more just qualifying system.

Sadly, 6AA results suggest that we were right.

Let us know what you think, on our DtB poll or with a comment ...

2 comments:

maxpower2911 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brian said...

My head is still spinning over "abattoir". Can you help me out with that one Charlie.