VALLEY / VENTURA COUNTY SPORTS : THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Crowded Running Field at the Top

When the state cross- country championships expanded from four to five divisions in 1996, two reasons were given for the change.

The first was that a fifth division would give cross-country the same number of state champions as basketball and volleyball.

The second was that small private and religious schools would now have a division where they could compete against schools of their own size.

Three years later, it’s the large Division I schools who find themselves in an unfair situation, particularly in the Southern Section.

Because of rising enrollment, 130 Southern Section schools will field Division I cross-country teams this season, compared to 79 in Division II, 46 in Division III, 60 in Division IV and 96 in Division V.

The numbers at the state level are also skewed. There will be 251 Division I boys’ teams--the numbers for girls vary slightly--with 193 in Division II, 154 in Division III, 190 in Division IV and 181 in Division V.

“I don’t think it’s fair across the board for everybody,” said Coach Ken Reeves of Nordhoff, a Division IV power. “It’s obviously harder to win a Division I championship than at any other level.”

There is an overabundance of Division I teams because enrollment at most large schools has increased in recent years, while there has been no change in the parameters used to determine divisions.

“[Those parameters] haven’t been adjusted since we added Division V,” said Hal Harkness, meet director of the state track and field championships and a member of the state track-cross-country advisory committee. “The numbers were established so that there would be an equal number of schools in each division, and that’s no longer the case.”

Under the current parameters, a school that has a California Basic Educational Data (CBED) number for grades 10-12 of 1,533 or more students is regarded as a Division I school in cross-country.

Schools with CBED numbers of 1,217-1,532 are in Division II, followed by Division III (908-1,216), Division IV (401-907) and Division V (400 and under).

Harkness said he has been told by state officials that under no circumstances will the Division V parameters be changed. But he has proposed raising the minimum CBED number for Division I schools to approximately 1,660.

That adjustment, along with corresponding ones for Divisions II, III and IV, would give the state between 190-200 cross-country programs in each of those divisions.

The proposal seems to offer a logical solution to the problem, but it has encountered resistance from some section commissioners in Northern California.

“They’re opposed to changing things because they don’t have a lot of Division I schools up there,” Harkness said. “They’re afraid of losing spots in the state meet, but something has to be done.”

The inability to remedy the situation has frustrated many coaches, including Reeves and Bill Tokar of Ventura.

Tokar, whose teams would remain in Division I under the new proposal, says adjusting the division parameters could be done on an annual basis.

“I get really frustrated with the fact that the [CBED] data is available every year and it wouldn’t take that much time to redo it,” Tokar said. “It shouldn’t take more than two or three hours if you have the data in front of you.”

The Southern Section will send six boys’ and girls’ teams--instead of the usual four--to the state Division I finals this year because of the high number of large schools, but Tokar would rather see five balanced divisions with four teams advancing from each.

There is an obvious, but controversial, solution to the divisional problem: Eliminate divisions from the state championships.

Instead of awarding championships in five divisions, have one big race in which the best teams in the state--no matter the size of their schools--race each other.

The chances of this ever happening are slim and none, but a single division format would make for superb competition.

Sure, the races would typically be dominated by teams from larger schools, but think of the excitement that would be generated by the possibility of a small school upsetting a large school for the state title.

Think of the excitement that would have been generated in 1996 if Division V champion McFarland had upset Division I champion Peninsula for the boys’ title.

Or in 1995, when Division III girls’ champion Nordhoff stunned experts by posting a team time--the cumulative time of its top five runners--that was nearly 1:30 faster than any other school.