NCAA REPORT
Division l Track & Field and Cross Country
RON MANN
BARRY HARTWICK
PRESIDENT, NCAA DIVISION I TRACK AND FIELD COACHES
PRESIDENT, NCAA DIVISION I CROSS COUNTRY COACHES
s your president, I would like to encourage all coaches to attend the 2011 Convention in San Antonio. This year’s convention has a great mix of social, educational, and legislative topics and discussions that you will not want to miss! The opening session will kick off a great week, as NCAA President Dr. Mark Emmert will be the keynote speaker. In addition, we are fortunate to have the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, Grant Teaff, speaking at the Convention on Wednesday. Teaff has helped the AFCA become perhaps the most influential coaches association in the U.S., and he will be speaking about the development and importance of a strong coaches association. I also would invite all of you to attend the first-ever women’s summit at the convention, held on Thursday after the voting sessions. There is no cost for Convention attendees, but registration is required. This summit provides a great platform for all coaches to share and learn from seasoned leaders in the field of women’s issues in athletics. As we close 2011 and move into 2012, the Division I Track & Field Executive Committee, as a leadership team, hopes to continue to improve and professionalize the way we do business throughout the year and at Convention. We asked that all convention discussion topics be submitted by November 1st. Topics submitted by this deadline will be reviewed by the Executive Committee for acceptance into the Convention agenda. In addition, we have adopted a new process in which submitted agenda items are reviewed and discussed at their first Convention and voted on at their second convention, unless the issue is time-sensitive. This new, extended timeline will give us more time to discuss issues and perform due diligence in terms of working out details and anticipating potential challenges prior to taking a vote. This is an NCAA playing rules-change year for our sports, with new playing rules proposals due May 1. I want to encourage coaches who have ideas for playing rules changes to bring them to Convention for discussion by the body. We also will continue to make recommendations to streamline the Outdoor Track and Field Preliminary Championship Competition, in concert with the NCAA Division I Track and Field Sport Subcommittee. I look forward to seeing each of you in San Antonio! Your thoughts and ideas are important to me and to our Association.
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Ron Mann is the Head Men’s & Women’s Track & Field Coach at the University of Louisville. Ron can be reached at ron.mann@louisville.edu
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e are already in the midst of an exciting 2011 cross-country season. Each week your regional representatives devote significant amounts of time to producing a poll with the top 15 teams in each region. These 18 men and women are doing a great job so take some time to thank them for the efforts. Think about this for a second: We are ranking 135 men’s teams and 135 women’s teams! This is great publicity for our sport. If your squad is ranked, please make sure your Sports Information Office is aware of this and that they post it on your school website and any other outlets they have access to. There seem to be more large invitational races in mid-October than in previous seasons. Having a variety of scheduling options is good for our sport. I would encourage coaches to commit to whatever meet they choose to attend as early as possible to allow meet directors time to plan their events proplerly. In September, the NCAA cabinet voted to approve the move of our championship meet from Monday to Saturday and the date of the regional meets from Saturday to Friday. (As this letter goes to press we are waiting to see if this will go into effect for 2012 or if we will have to wait for 2013.) The national office and our Executive Committee are already hard at work in planning for the convention. I urge you to take the time this week to go online to register for the convention and to make your travel plans. At the fall meeting of the Ivy League coaches I strongly encouraged each school to have at least one representative at the convention. I hope you each will do the same when you meet at your conference championships. Here are some of the issues we plan to discuss, debate and move forward on at the convention: We need to advocate the better promotion and television coverage of our national championship. We need to discuss the optimal size of the championship field. Increased field size clearly gives more access to the championship. We need to balance that with the question of how many athletes we can put on the starting line at the championship and still have a safe and fair competition. (The Division II championship will now include 32 teams, but not as many individuals as Div. I.) There is a strong consensus to rank 64 teams at the end of each session. At the convention we plan to present a template to the coaches on how this could work. These topics, and others, will be addressed by the executive committee. Coaches will be able to weigh in on these at the regional breakout sessions and in the general sessions. If you want your voice to be heard, please come to San Antonio. Good luck in your coming meets. I hope to see many of you in Terre Haute, at the convention or other meets along the way.
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Barry Hartwick is the Head Men’s Track & Field and Cross Country Coach at Dartmouth College. Barry can be reached at Barry.Harwick@Dartmouth.EDU