I wanted to put this up before the announcement of at larges come up but it seems to me that to give California an at large bid of any sort when they are the only region that doesn't race their way into the meet in the first place seems patently unfair.
Yes I know they use the California state meet to select the teams but it's a merge not a race and frankly I think a race among the top 20 teams in California might well bring much different results than a merge.
California teams also rarely venture outside the state to allow for a true measure of comparison with other states and at least the regionals allow for that to happen.
New York teams at least face out-of-state competition regularly at Manhattan and other events and have to race their way in at a regional race (albeit within their own region).
I'd feel a lot better about a California at large bid of any sort if they actually had to run a race against the teams they're competing with rather than through a merge.
It's not like California (especially the boys) have had such great success at Nationals as opposed to the New York girls.
I read this from another and strongly agree , california seems to have a very unfair system , wasn't the team nationals suppose to get rid of commitees and shouldnt it be different commitees deciding california top four and then there bottom two, be in the at large system . I understand no system is perfect but this needs fixed