All team members must fall into one of the following five (5) eligibility categories:
- Employees:
Must have been employed continuously by the corporation forty-five days prior to the start of the National meet. They must be working 20 hours or more per week (for each of the six plus weeks leading up to the Nationals), and be on the corporation’s payroll and have taxes withheld by the corporation. An athlete who is an employee of a corporate team competing at the Corporate Cup Relays National Championship is not eligible to participate as a member of a Club team. - Contractors:
Must be under contract with the corporation six months prior to the start of the National meet. Must be working 30 hours or more per week, for that corporation, for the entire six months. Eligible contractors comprise independent contractors; outsourced former employees who continue to perform the same work for the corporation, and staff who have long-term service commitments with the corporation, who take direction from corporate employees, and who work to fulfill corporate business objectives, even if they are paid through payroll or temporary staffing agencies. Employees of outside consulting firms who are assigned to client corporations on task assignments are not eligible to compete for those client corporations (example: Andersen Consulting employees on assignment to Hughes may not compete for Hughes). Contractors are eligible to compete as alumni if they have worked for the company for 24 months. Any contractor who qualifies as an alumni under this provision would be part of the Alumni/Spouses rule which caps the number of participants in those categories at 5. - Retirees:
Must be pension eligible, former employees, with five or more years of service to the corporation and whose age plus years of service equals fifty-five years or more. Years of service accumulated with a business divested, sold or spun off from the parent corporation may be included in the calculation. Retirees must not be in the full time employment of another USCAA competing corporation. Retirees may not run in either the Executive Relay or President’s Relay events, even if they still reside on the Board of Directors for that company. There is no limit on the number of retirees who may compete for a corporation. - Alumni/Spouses:
Up to five (5) ex-employees or eligible contractors (see item 2. Contractors) who have previously competed for a team in at least one (1) USCAA National Track & Field Championship are eligible to compete for that team, provided they are not employed by another competing USCAA team. They may not run in either the Executive Relay or President’s Relay events. No more than two (2) ex-employees can come from a single company. Ex-employees who participated in Nationals exclusively as summer interns are not eligible to compete under the alumni provision. Teams may substitute up to three (3) spouses/significant others of participating team members for alumni under this provision.
Pool Runners (eligible in Division III only):
There is a precedence set to allow a limited number of unattached runners to compete at the USCAA Track Championships. Such “pool runners” (or a team captain/representative in their place) must contact the USCAA Board prior to the date of the Championships – preferably two weeks or more – for consideration of placement on a particular team. The Board will designate a subcommittee that will make an attempt to place each pool runner with a team in need of any particular aspect unique to that pool runner such as gender, age, distance/event specialty, etc. Pool runners are a separate distinction from Alumni/Spouses as described above.
Corporate Mergers/Splits:
If a corporate merger takes legal effect within the ninety days prior to a National championship, a participating company may enter the event under its pre-merger Division status. If a new corporate entity spins off from a larger corporation, athletes who have competed for the parent corporation at previous National Championships are eligible to compete with that corporation for up to six months after the effective date of the corporate split. This provision shall not apply if the new corporate entity enters a team in the subject event. Athletes participating under this “corporate split” provision may not run in the Executive or President’s Relay events.
Joint Ventures:
Employees who are dedicated to joint venture partnerships with another company or companies, but who are paid and receive benefits through their original employer, may compete only for their own employer. A company’s joint venture partners are not eligible to compete on each other’s teams so long as joint venture employees continue to be paid and receive benefits through their original employers. For example: Zebra Corp. and Kimodo Inc. form a joint venture; employees dedicated to this effort continue to be paid by Zebra and Kimodo, and are thus eligible to compete only for their company’s respective team. If Kimodo does not field a team, its employees are not eligible to compete for Zebra. If a joint venture partnership becomes a corporate entity itself, and joint venture employees are paid and receive benefits through this new entity, employees may not compete for their original employers but may form a new team representing the new corporate entity, drawing on all employees of said corporation. For example: Zebra and Kimodo’s joint venture becomes its own company, Striped Lizzie, and now has former Zebra and Kimodo employees on its payroll and benefits. Striped Lizzie employees may not compete for Zebra or Kimodo, except as otherwise provided under the alumni rule provisions.
In all age-restricted events, a participant’s age is determined as of December 31 of the current year.
If a participant in a particular event does not meet the event’s eligibility standards, the team will be disqualified from that event.
Frequency of Participation / Records:
For all Divisions, each athlete may compete in a maximum of 4 prelims and/or a maximum of 4 finals, not to exceed a total of 6 events overall. Each field event will count as ½ event against an athlete’s tally.
If an athlete is a member of an event team that either DNFs or is disqualified in either prelims or finals, ALL athletes on that team will be charged for that event toward the event participation ceiling of 4 finals and 2 prelims (3 prelims for Division 3).
An individual may not run more than one leg in an event.
Event records must be set in a race for that Division. That is, if a Division 3 team opts to compete as a Division 1 team, that team can only set Division 1 records. If they bring in a performance that would have set a Division 3 record had they been competing in that Division, that record will not count. However, if the Meet Director decides to run the two Divisions together for a particular event, then each team’s records will count in the Division for which the team is running.
At the discretion of the Meet Director, exhibition teams may compete as long as they do not impact the other teams in the finals (4 x 100 Relay only).
