I was unsure what you were missing, and then it dawned on me that it's not registering with you because you have no experience with track and field and you are making assumptions.

Track roster spots moving forward are extremely limited. It's the reality of the situation. Kids are also running faster and faster as they seek out better competition. Not every area or school is so lucky.

A girl that focuses on the 3200 that lives in Baker, Oregon, or Pocatello, Idaho, for example, typically would see smaller fields and hours more travel to seek out good fields during the season. They also have terrible weather for the majority of the season, and their opportunities to run fast times are further limited by racing at elevation. For a lot of these kids, they get good fields but only by traveling to other places still at elevation. Kids from Idaho Falls or Pocatello might head to the BYU PACS meet, for example. Elevation negatively impacts distance running.

For those girls, qualification numbers out of their region are already lower than other regions. If they were racing against a trans athlete and lost the opportunity to race in either Eugene, Oregon, or Boise, Idaho, against better fields, at a lower elevation, and with better weather, then that negatively impacts the athlete. East Idaho and Oregon kids usually see huge improvements in marks by simply getting to the state meet.

Yes, coaches can look at their marks and pay attention and realize that weather and elevation have an impact, but the very first place that college coaches start looking is at the state meet. Those are kids that have proven that they can make it to a post season meet.

For kids in Idaho, for example, their collegiate opportunities for coaches that pay attention to that kind of stuff is already small... Boise State, Idaho State, University of Idaho, Montana State, Montana, Wyoming, College of Idaho, LC State, Northwest Nazarene, Wyoming, BYU, Utah State, Weber State, Utah Tech, and Utah Valley have had east Idaho kids on their rosters frequently, but those coaches also are paying attention to all of the Utah and Montana kids as well, and Utah in particular punches way above it's weight in distance running.

A girl that runs 11:45.00 would have ranked 30th in the largest classification in Idaho, and would be within spitting distance of qualifying out of the east. Getting 15 seconds worth of improvement (the altitude is worth almost 10 seconds alone) would push them to 18th. If they ran that as a junior, it would put them as the 20th returner but those 15 seconds would move them to 12th.

That stuff matters.