Division II National Championship Regional Qualifying Procedure

Proposal for a Regional Qualification System for NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field Championships

The proposal is outlined as follows:

Auto Qualifiers
The top 4 individuals and top 4 relay teams off of the season ending performance declaration list prior to the Regional round automatically qualify for the final championship round regardless of their performance at the Super Regional meet. They may choose to declare for, and participate in the Super Regional but not participating in the Super Regional round would not disqualify them from the Final Championship round.

Regional Declaration Round
Coaches will need to declare their athletes in events that they want to compete in the post season competition after the last day to qualify similar to how we declare athletes now for the National Championship Meet on DirectAthletics. In each of the eight Division II regions, the top 8 declared student-athletes in each individual event (including auto qualifiers that declare to compete) other than the men’s Decathlon and the women’s Heptathlon, and the top 4 declared relay teams in each relay shall automatically qualify for the NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Outdoor Track & Field Championships and participate in their assigned First Round Super Regional competition.

NCAA Super Regional Round
This round will consist of 4 Super Regional Meets. Each Super Regional would consist of two regions combined. The regions would be combined as follows:
Super Region 1: East Region and Atlantic Region (83 Division II Institutions)
Super Region 2: Southeast Region and South Region (74 Division II Institutions)
Super Region 3: Midwest Region and Central Region (82 Division II Institutions)
Super Region 4: South Central Region and West Region (69 Division II Institutions)

Using this model there is very good balance in terms of number of institutions per region and travel would be minimized by combining regions that border each other.

The individual events will consist 16 athletes. Each relay will have 8 teams allowing relays to be run in one round. Each Super Regional will be contested in two days with prelims and finals in all individual running events less than 3,000 meters and finals only in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, relays, and field events according to NCAA rules of flights and advancement. Any athletes or relays that are already Auto-Qualified and choose to still compete would be removed from consideration for the top three individual qualifier or top two relay qualifier spots. So for example, if at a Super Regional meet an athlete that is already Auto Qualified based on being in the top 4 on the national list in an event finishes first in that event at the Super Regional the top three spots would go to places 2 through 4 instead of 1 through 3.

Final National Championship Round
The top three finishers in each individual event and top two relays in the Super Regional meet will advance to the Final National Championship Round along with the four auto qualifiers per event. Event qualifiers from the Super Regional MUST compete in that event at the National Meet except relays. That would give the final round a field of 16 athletes per individual event and 12 relay teams. The event will be run like the current championship in a three-day format. See below for Heptathlon/Decathlon qualifying procedure.

Notes:
I propose that we hold the final championship round the weekend after we are currently holding our championship meet. I would make the Super Regional Meets two weeks prior to that (our current last day to qualify). This will help us in two ways. One, we will not be competing with the NCAA Division I Regional Meets and the NCAA Division III National meet for meet officials. It will put us on our own weekend with no other NCAA track and field championship meet going on so we could take advantage of extra chances for publicity and recognition for our sport in OUR division. It would keep some student athletes on campus a week longer but with more athletes being finished after the Super Regional many athletes will actually be done a week earlier than the current model because that meet would be the week before our current nationals. I believe the amount of money institutions would spend would actually end up being the same in the long run.

If we had this format in 2016 the dates would have looked like this:
Conference Championships Weekend: 5/6 – 5/7
Regional Declarations due: 5/8
Top 12 Individuals and top 4 relays selected from each region from declared list: 5/9
Super Regional Meets – 5/20 – 5/21
Final Round Championship Meet – 6/2 – 6/4

That leaves 2 weeks between conference weekend and Super Regional Weekend and 2 weeks between Super Regional and National Finals.

NCAA Funding for the 4 Super Regionals could come from the savings of having a smaller Final Round Championship and having to fly less athletes from around the country to the finals site. NCAA could possibly pay for timers and key officials because it would be an NCAA Super Regional Championship. Host sites would be done through a bid process.

Under this proposal the Heptathlon/Decathlon would be picked off the national descending order list as we currently do. It would be difficult to do those events 3 times in 6 weeks. So we would take the top 16 Heptathletes and Decathletes off the national descending order list for the Final Championship meet to have the same number as the other events.