For middle school runners and younger, the USATF championships are the most competitive. The AAU youth meets have top runners equivalent to the USATF youth meets, but they don't have the depth of runners. No top high schoolers ever enter the USATF meet.
In high school it is all Footlocker for top Individual runners and all NXN for top teams. But that is about to change. This year 5 of the top 15 HS girl runners are doing NXN (but not the top-3 of Hasay, Brasovan & Kroeger -- probably because these 3 are all prior year FL winners).
In a year or two more top individual runners will enter NXN than FL. After that things will quickly snowball in Nike's favor.
5 years ago Nike took control of the HS Outdoor Championships away from Adidas. Nike will soon dominate the indoor championships as well. The National Scholastic HS Indoor Championship is run by USATF's NY Metropolitan Association and it will soon die. What has prevented this from happening over the last 6 years is that the NY Metro HS Champ was held on a very fast banked track at the NYC Armory, while the Nike HS Indoor Champ. meet was held on a slow un-banked track in Maryland. Top HS sprinters much preferred the faster Armory track. But this year, Nike has finally moved its championship to a fast banked track at Reggie Lewis Arena in Boston. Boston is also a big running/track town.
FYI, last year the NY Metro Assoc. was so broke that it didn't/couldn't pay the NYC Armory for using it facilities for the HS Indoor Championship. This year the Armory itself is going to collect admission fees at the door to be sure it gets paid. USATF's NY Metro Assoc. is having management problems as is USATF itself. Don't be surprised if the NY Metro HS Indoor Champ meet dies out, or at least is no longer competitive with the Nike Indoor HS Chmp (NIC) in as little as 2 years from now.
With Nike hosting both the indoor and outdoor HS track championships, and wanting to take over the Footlocker Championship as well, what is going to stop them? Nike's financial resources are over 100X those of Footlocker's. Nike is better organized and will out spend Footlocker by whatever it takes to offer a much better experience for both the runners and their parents. By starting with 9 regions (including the CA State Chmp), Nike has made it much easier and less expensive for parents to send their kids to the regional meets. Footlocker, with its 4 widely disbursed region championship sites, can cost many parents more than they would like to spend. I don’t know if there are any differences in what FL and NXN are willing to pay for travel expenses for a parent chaperone. If Nike offers to pay parent expenses and FL can’t afford to, that will be the end of FL..
If I was coaching a top HS runner, I'd encourage that runner to go to the NXN this year, unless he/she had a good chance of placing on the top-5 at FL. NXN or NIC may not yet be as prestigious as Footlocker and NY's Nat HS Indoor Scholastic Chmp., but several years from now few will remember either Footlocker or the Nat HS Sch. Chmp. Meet. Today almost no one remembers the Kinney championships of years past.
I'm not a Nike fan, but they usually do a very good job at producing the HS champ meets and also at pro meets they own. Footlocker officials have had difficulty laying out a correct course length a Van Cortlandt park and they don't appear open to suggestions how to change and improve things. Perhaps with the possibility of being put out of business, Footlocker might finally wake and run better meets. But I didn’t see any effort to hold a better meet at Van Cortlandt Park this year. First, FL needs to replace some of the old folks running their meets who are not at all comfortable making needed changes. FL meets are run by retired old folks while NXN meets are run by young 20 and 30 year olds. Which meet do you think the kids are going to like the best?
One final note: FL is run on a not too hilly golf course, in warm 70 degree weather. NXN is run is rainy Portland over what usually turns out be a very muddy course with lots of obstacles. The NXN race is much more fun to watch, but it favors stronger runners.