From: polly@grover.Stanford.EDU (Polly Siegel)
Subject: Re: NCCA - Let's Fix It
Organization: Center for Integrated Systems, Stanford University
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 22:10:50 GMT

97994779@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu writes:
>  
> >Likewise, in deciding what races count for going
> >to nationals is also set by the conferences, thus in the WCCC, the top
> >8 races plus the conference championships count, meaning that you
> >don't have to go into all 25 odd races at full strength.
>  
> How do you decide what the Top 8 races are? Wouldn't it be easier and less
> costly if everyone knew ahead of time what races would count? For example,
> say a school went to 10 races and only 6 were in the mythical Top 8 and
> because of this they didn't qulify for nationals. I do think the decision
> of how many races and which races would count should be decided at the
> conference level, but I think that the idea deserves discussion. I am sure
> at Stanford you have no problem having so many races because of the mild
> climate and some conferences would take advantage of that fact.

In the WCCC, it's your best 8 races out of any that you attended.  So any
of the races that you attend count towards the best 8.  I'm sure that in
other conferences where the climate is worse and there are fewer races,
there are different criterion for qualifying for conference championships. 
>  
> >
> >As to the idea of splitting men's and women's teams at nationals, I
> >do not see the worth in the idea.  One of the things I like most about
> >collegiates is that it is such a team sport.
>  
> So tell me how the women's team benefits you as a racer? How do you benefit
> them.

I think each school will have its own perspective on what they want to see
based on their current team composition.  For Stanford, we have a
well-rounded team, with a strong women's team, so we obviously like the
fact that everything's combined.  There are logistical reasons for
combining the categories, having to do with the complexity of putting on a
race.  For most other sports (varsity or not) you don't have to deal with
logistics of road closures and the expensive of police to put on an event.
The more categories over which to amortize, the more realistic it is to
put on the event.  Now you could still do this if the categories weren't
combined, but it might be a little more difficult to get cooperation
between the team members.

> Let me use the University of Washington as an example. They have an
> excellent women's team and their men's team keeps them from going to
> nationals. It is detrimental for them to have a men's team.

But there is a provision for that called "individual qualification".  The
two strong women's riders from UW went to Nationals.  Most of the top men
and women in our conference were made up from teams that qualified for
Nationals as a team.

> At WSU we have
> qualified the last four years with 1 woman the first three years and 2 women
> last year. We spend a lot of time trying to get women to race for us, but the
> fact is that they don't exist! We don't have year round riding, and
> scholarships to lure women here. Why should we be penalized for something
> that we have no control over?  We have been able to overide this
> hqandicap in the past, but they may not be so in the future since our Cat Is
> are no longer attending school 2nd semester.

We don't have scholarships to lure women here either, but we still manage
to recruit enough to make a team.  It would be great if we had more too..
I find that the best recruiters of new women seem to be supportive men.
We get a lot of women who cross over from other sports.  We advertise
in the campus newspaper to help recruit... In the fall we have special
women's rides and do other things to help get people interested.  I'm not
saying it's easy, but it can be done!

- polly



-- 
-------
Polly Siegel
Center for Integrated Systems
(polly@grover.stanford.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.racing