4th Place Teams: A History and Preview
This is gonna be a long one, folks. Get some coffee, maybe order a pizza. The Rule Directly from the MHSAA: If a school finishes fourth in the Regional Meet with four or more runners in the top 20 places, and eight (8) or more complete teams finish the race, that school will also qualify a team for the Final Meet. Pretty straightforward. Presumably, the intent is to get worthy teams from strong regions, but that's not necessarily what ends up happening. The ideal 4th-place qualifier is a team that's not in a strong region, doesn't have a low stick, and has a big gap between their #4 and #5 runners. Why? If the region has 2 or 3 dominant teams, too many of the top-20 spots will be taken up. If they've got a low stick, there's a good chance they finish in the top 3 and qualify directly for states. If the 5th runner is close to the top 4, the team is once again probably good enough to just qualify the normal way. Say, how about we take a look at how that's worked