Fall Coaches Meeting Recap

With frost on the grass under sunny, blue skies, the Minnesota High School Nordic Coaches Association held their annual Fall Meeting at the beautiful Vasaloppet Nordic Center in Mora, MN.  The annual meeting provides a review of the current league rules, changes in policy, along with proposal discussions.  The Vasaloppet Center affords a central location for most of the participants and the Mora volunteers provided top notch facilities including a great lunch of hot-off-the-grill bratwursts (with sauerkraut, of course!).

This year's meeting opened with a smaller, but more centralized vendor expo as the booths were moved into the same area as the main meeting hall.  Area stores such as Ski Hut and Hoigaards were there, along with manufacturers like Swix, Salomon, Fischer, Fast Wax, Hidden Bay and Mt. Borah, as well as the Rollerski Shop and even Jack Link's Beef Jerky!

The main meeting got underway at 9 am under the direction of current President Pete Tremaine of Anoka.   Some of the major points from the meeting:

• Secretary/Treasurer: With the retirement of the current secretary/treasurer, they are seeking a new volunteer to step up. 
• Charlie Banks Relays:  All skiers will be required to wear team uniforms (last season's warm weather brought out some unusual variations).
• Summer/Fall Training:  Clarification on off-season Nordic ski training with coaching staff (including volunteers) from the skier's own school.  The open training period is defined as June 1st to July 31st.  There is also a week-long blackout period, usually around the July 4th week.
• Officier Compensation:  After much discussion, it was decided to award a $500 annual compensation for future presidents.
• Rules: All coaching staff is required to view a video on concussions at least once every three years.  Head coaches must be certified.   Skiers must race in the section meet in order to win an individual medal at the State Meet (so a skier whose team qualifies, but they were unable to compete at sections, either due to illness or other commitments, could not medal as an individual even if they come in first in the pursuit).
  
• Rankings:  Mike Hecker and Tremaine will continue to led the rankings effort, with assistance from a number of coaches.   They encourage additional coaches to participate, especially someone from central MN/St.Cloud area.   They will also try to crank out a weekly ranking starting sometime in December and get it submitted for newspaper publication.

The biggest topic of discussion for the day was the State Meet qualification and scoring proposals.  Scott Clark and Chris Torvi presented their 3 by 5 plan, which is is defined as:

• To advance, a team would have to finish in first or second place in their section meet. Each team would be defined as their top five skiers in the section meet, with two alternates.
  
• Remove the top five skiers from the two advancing teams and the remaining five
  fastest pursuit skiers would advance as individuals.

In discussion, it was further clarified that the group of five individual qualifiers could contain skiers from one of the two qualifying teams that weren't part of the team's top five (i.e. the teams skiers 6 and 7 could potentially qualify as individuals).  However, at the State Meet the two section teams would have to declare their top five skiers competing for the team score.

The second proposal, championed by Ben Kroft, simply proposed that the top 15 skiers qualified for the State Meet.  At the State Meet then, scores would be computed for every team (i.e. even teams of one, two or three skiers would receive team scores).  However, in order to level the advantage of a large team, a maximum of four skiers would be used to calculate the team's score.

After extensive discussion, the two proposals were voted on by ballot (head coaches only) and using an instant runoff format where the proposals were ranked.   The initial vote tally had no proposal winning a majority, so the instant runoff was invoked.  The 3 by 5 proposal won by a margin of 54 to 47 over the top 15 proposal.

The 3 by 5 plan will be drafted into an official proposal and presented to the Minnesota State High School League for approval.  If approved, the earliest it would go into effect would be the 2012-2013 season.   (It should be noted that the high school league rejected a hybrid proposal last summer.)

The big meeting wrapped up with a nice raffle, awarding a number of products provided by some of the expo vendors.