With the season starting Monday, who is pushing forward with going to invitationals of up to 150 runners and who will stick to duals, tris or quads??
I imagine most will do both: Attend as many invitationals as were on the original schedule and fill in the cancelled meets any way they can.
Thus far, my school has only had 1 invitational cancelled (3rd weekend), and that vacancy will be filled via a meet vs. 4 or 5 other local teams who all have relatively small numbers of runners. The meet my school plans to attend on Saturday is only allowing 10 runners per team and won't be adding any JV races. The invite for the 2nd weekend used to run only 1 race per gender but is splitting it into varsity and JV races. However, they are requesting that all runners be able to finish in 30:00 or less, and they are planning to adhere to the recommendations of 150 runners or less, so some JV runners could be left out. A school nearby inquired about running the 4th weekend because said school is not in the NE District, so it can't attend the Boardman Invite, and therefore, has precious few options for that weekend. Also, the information on Boardman suggests they may allow only 10 runners per team. Anything is better than nothing, but the restrictions on race sizes could make it a tough year for JV runners. It'll look more like other sports where playing time is finite and not guaranteed. Beauty will be in the eye of the beholder.
1 of the big schools down the street cancelled its opening weekend invitational and will instead run a 5-team meet. The invite the school was planning to attend the 3rd weekend was cancelled, so they're hosting a true invitational in its place. I imagine many of the other teams invited were ones that usually attend that same meet that was cancelled.
Our county meet's varsity races will be OK at 7 runners per team. The girls JV race had exactly 150 finishers last year. The boys JV race may need to be split in order to accommodate all runners as it had 224 finishers last year. Instead of splitting into a JV race and an open race, I'd prefer to see a junior/senior race and a freshman/sophomore race. Last year's middle school races had 226 boys and 179 girls finish.
