Changes to Collegiate Nationals Beginning 2016-17

[Palmer, Emily]

Hello,

 

I wanted to share with you all some exciting news that is going to change the long term trajectory for collegiate cycling.

 

After over a year of soliciting feedback from riders, clubs and coaches as well as working with the collegiate committee USA Cycling has decided to move to hosting varsity and club races at collegiate nationals rather than the DI and DII races that have been hosted historically. This will begin with the 2016 Mountain Bike Nationals and continue from there.

 

Long term we believe this is a needed change in order to give club cycling a better and more competitive platform, where teams are competing against other teams in their peer group. Collegiate cycling has a strong history of club racing and we feel this will give it the best chance to have a strong future as well.

 

This change allows the growth of varsity to stand on its own, rather than at the expense of the club programs. The varsity program will be undergoing dramatic changes in the next year, with increasing oversight as well as a better definition of what a varsity cycling program is. This will be based largely on institutional support and operations, rather than competitiveness.

 

If you are interested in seeing a potential numbers breakdown, scenarios using historic numbers are attached. This will affect the mountain bike, cyclo-cross and road nationals the most in that those races are separated unlike track and BMX. And although there are still details to be worked out within this plan, but we know that we will be sticking with a two race format (ex: one XC race for varsity, one XC race for club) and there will be no exceptions granted for schools to participate out of designation, unlike what has been done in the past for DI and DII.

 

A few things up for discussion still:

 

- How this trickles down to the conferences and allocations.

 

- Whether we increase the individual race cap for varsity teams, particularly for the criterium at road nationals

 

- If we still award the team omnium split between DI and DII within the varsity and club races (ex: There’s one varsity individual champion for the road race, but there is a DI varsity team omnium champion and a DII varsity team omnium champion)

 

The committee will continue to work on the answers to these questions and many others, and as always your input is welcome. Please feel free to send comments to myself, or through the committee (colle...@usacycling.org).

 

Emily Palmer

Interscholastic and Club Development Coordinator

USA Cycling

210 USA Cycling Point, Suite 100, Colorado Springs, CO 80919

Phone: 719.434.4202

Cell: 719.321.1687

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