# NCAA Altitude Conversions End in 2026-27 > The NCAA voted in June 2026 to end altitude and indoor track-size conversions for championship qualifying from 2026-27. What the report says and what changes. September 1, 2026 · 4 min read **Starting with the 2026-27 season the NCAA no longer converts altitude marks, or indoor flat-track and undersized-track marks, when it ranks athletes for its championships. The Division I oversight committee voted the conversions out at its June 22-23, 2026 meeting. There is no 2026-27 NCAA altitude conversion table, and any chart offering one describes a rule that has ended.** ## What the committee decided The report of the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Track and Field and Cross Country Oversight Committee, item 10, records that after reviewing feedback and proposals the members "voted to eliminate both altitude conversions for indoor and outdoor track and field, along with track size conversions for indoor track and field effective for the 2026-27 academic year." The reasons given for dropping altitude conversions are three: altitude affects every individual differently yet a uniform conversion was applied to everyone; no conversion was applied for other conditions such as heat or humidity; and no other level of the sport uses altitude conversions at all. That last point is easy to check: NFHS high school meets, USATF championships and World Athletics competition all take the time as run, and none of them publishes an altitude table. The reasons for dropping track-size conversions are five: every track is different yet a uniform factor was applied by track type; there was no real science behind the factors; there is more access to 200m banked tracks than ever; every track affects individuals differently depending on their biomechanics; and, again, no other level of the sport converts for track size. The committee's summary of the whole system was that it "has shortcomings, can at times be used in ways that create unintended advantages in the qualification process, and may ultimately have a negative impact on the sport." ## What the old system did Under the previous procedure a distance time run at a high-altitude facility was converted to a faster sea-level equivalent before it went on the qualifying list. Athletic Business, reporting on the vote, put the threshold at facilities above 3,000 feet and named BYU, Colorado, Colorado State and New Mexico among the programs affected. Kyle Merber at CITIUS Mag gave the scale of it: a 14:00 5000m at the Sky Dome in Flagstaff was worth 13:22 on last season's list and will be worth 14:00 on next season's. Indoors, times from flat 200m tracks and undersized tracks were multiplied by the NCAA's published factors to produce banked-track equivalents; [indoor track sizes](https://trackreels.io/blog/indoor-track-sizes) explains what those track types are, and [indoor versus outdoor](https://trackreels.io/blog/indoor-vs-outdoor-track-differences) covers why the same runner is slower on them. Those factors are the chart behind the [flat track conversion tool](https://trackreels.io/convert/flat-track-conversion) on this site. The factors still describe how much a flat or short track costs relative to a banked one; what has changed is that the NCAA will not apply them when it selects a championship field. ## What changes for a recruit Qualifying is now on the raw time. A mile run on a flat track counts at face value against a mile run on a banked one, and a 5000m at altitude counts at face value against one at sea level. Recruiting standards do not move. The ranges on the [1500m and 1600m standards](https://trackreels.io/standards/1500-1600m/M) page and the marks on the [leaderboards](https://trackreels.io/leaderboard) were always raw times; no conversion was ever applied to them, so nothing on those pages changes with the rule, and [what marks get you recruited](https://trackreels.io/blog/what-marks-get-you-recruited) reads the same as it did. Meet choice matters more. Merber's argument against the change is that distance programs at altitude will now have to travel to sea-level and banked-track meets to post qualifying marks, and that smaller programs can least afford to. Whether or not the committee was right, that is the arithmetic a distance recruit at an altitude school now faces. Two things did not change. Wind rules still decide whether a sprint or jump mark is legal, and the [wind calculator](https://trackreels.io/convert/wind-calculator) still tells you what a reading is worth. Hand-timed marks are still a different category from fully automatic ones. ## What still converts For NCAA championship qualifying, nothing. The NCAA does not publish a 2026-27 altitude table because there is no longer anything for one to do. For reading your own mark, the flat-track factors remain a fair description of the tracks, and this site's tool will keep applying them with a note that the NCAA no longer does. ## Sources - [Report of the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Track and Field and Cross Country Oversight Committee, June 22-23, 2026](https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/championships/sports/crosstrack/d1/common/June2026D1XTF_Report.pdf), item 10, "Elimination of altitude conversions and track size/indexing conversions." The quotations above are from page 5. - [NCAA Committee Votes to End Altitude, Track-Size Conversions for Track and Field](https://www.athleticbusiness.com/operations/governing-bodies/article/15830661/ncaa-committee-votes-to-end-altitude-tracksize-conversions-for-track-and-field), Athletic Business, for the 3,000 foot threshold and the programs affected. - [Why Eliminating Altitude Conversions Won't Fix NCAA Track](https://citiusmag.com/articles/ncaa-track-altitude-conversions-rule-change), Kyle Merber, CITIUS Mag, July 23, 2026, for the Flagstaff example and the case against the change. I read the committee's report rather than the coverage of it; the two agree on the decision and the effective date, and the report is the source for every quotation here. [More TrackReels guides](https://trackreels.io/blog) · [Create your athlete profile](https://trackreels.io/signup) ## Keep reading [### NCAA Track Recruiting Calendar 2026-27 Every contact and dead period for Division I cross country and track this cycle, taken straight from the NCAA calendar updated 30 July 2026.](https://trackreels.io/blog/ncaa-track-recruiting-calendar-2026-27)[### When Can Coaches Contact You? By Class Year For D1 track the line is June 15 after sophomore year: for the class of 2029, June 15, 2027. What each class can do today, and the two moves legal at any age.](https://trackreels.io/blog/when-can-college-track-coaches-contact-you)[### Hand Time vs FAT: Why a Stopwatch Reads Fast What fully automatic timing is, the exact conversion coaches apply to a hand time, and why a stopwatch PR does not travel.](https://trackreels.io/blog/hand-timing-vs-fat-explained) --- Canonical page: https://trackreels.io/blog/ncaa-altitude-conversion-eliminated Site guide for agents: https://trackreels.io/llms.txt