The IHSAA made a major change to its policy about out-of-state contests last week.
Rule 10 governs "Interstate Contests and Practices Requiring Special Attention". The rule designates how far Indiana teams can travel outside of Indiana to compete in high school contests in season at 300 miles from the state line.
A case study example would be that Columbus North could travel to St. Louis to compete in a cross country meet with it being only about 160 miles from the state line but could not travel to California to compete.
The same rule also applied to out-of-state teams coming into Indiana to compete against Hoosier high schools. The rule formally read that the address of the out-of-state school "shall be within 600 miles roundtrip of the state line." This rule has been amended to drop any mileage restriction.
The schools must simply be a member of the governing athletic association in their state, like being a member of the IHSAA here, be in good standing, and compete in a sanctioned event using IHSAA or NFHS guidelines.
This now means that schools from across the country can travel to Indiana to compete against our state's best. This is a great step forward from the IHSAA in allowing Indiana athletes to shine against nationwide competition.
Events like the Valley Twilight in Terre Haute are already seeing a benefit as teams from Florida and other states are already committing to the meet.
This expanded rule, applied to all IHSAA sports, is nothing but a benefit to Indiana's cross-country track and field athletes.
See the full information on the policy change in the latest executive committee minutes