i know several people who have declined nationals personally to be honest with you. its really not that rare i dont think. i would do the same thing in her position. why? because playing on a soccer team representing your country would be a lot more fun. if shes that good at soccer, she probably has a better shot at getting a scholarship for that than running anyway.
elee wrote:
As one of Sarah Robinson’s coaches, I thought I could clarify some things and answer some questions that have been brought up in this thread.
Sarah is a full, participating member of the Gunn High School cross country team. She trains with the team and ran in all but one of our races this season. She is allowed to miss practice one day a week (note that this policy is true for anyone on our team with an approved conflict), and even though she had soccer practice every day, she actually preferred to do a running workout before going to soccer practice. Her soccer coaches (both school and club) have been quite accommodating to her running. For the past two years her club team has adjusted their tournament schedule so that Sarah could run in cross country races. In addition, her school coach gave his blessing for Sarah to run the West Regional race even though the school soccer season has already begun (she did play in two school games last week).
One thing to remember is that her improvement in running has only been a very recent thing. Last year, she placed 68th in the state meet (172nd overall combining all divisions) running 18:59 for 5K (her best at the 2.95 mile Crystal Springs course was even slower). For most of this season she was running faster, but not significantly so. At our league meet (consisting of just seven local schools) in early November, she wasn’t even the favorite to win. In a span of 2 races over 2 weeks, however, she dropped her Crystal Springs PR from 19:06 to 17:12.
When she committed to the national team training camp in December, she was just thinking about running the West Regional race and certainly didn’t expect to qualify for finals if she did. Our head coach, Matt Tompkins, encouraged her to run specifically to give her an opportunity against top competition. To that end, we gave Sarah a very specific race strategy that would give her the best shot at finishing in the top 10, but also had the potential for being very ugly if she wasn’t at her best. To her credit, Sarah wanted to run that way to challenge herself.
At the conclusion of the race, we immediately informed the Footlocker folks that Sarah would probably not be able to attend the finals so that they could inform the 11th place finisher. After calling her parents to confirm the details of the training camp, Sarah formally declined her invitation. The 11th place finisher was confirmed within thirty minutes of the finish of the race.
As for the future, your guess is as good as ours. She does enjoy running and plans on doing both cross country and track throughout high school. Soccer, however, is her primary focus and what she would like to do in college. She is well aware that her current size isn’t advantageous for her soccer career, but her older sister was even smaller than Sarah at that age and ended up growing to 5’7” by the end of high school. Our job as coaches is just to give her opportunities and to best prepare her for achieving her goals, whatever those may be.
-ernie lee.
Gunn Cross Country.
Hey Ernie, Congratulations to you, Sarah, and the whole Gunn team. Seems like she has plenty of time to decide between running and soccer. Jennifer says "Hi". You're the man. Beat Paly!
Chris
whatevvvs wrote:
Cross country and track are possibly Stanford's weakest sports at the moment.
Stanford is good in plenty of sports, but do you really think XC is possibly their weakest sport? Come on dude, get real.
Men's basketball isn't even in the top 25 right now.
flw wrote:
Uh, no. She was 4th.
Umbrellas?
She was 5th place not 4th. Check the results.
wrong place wrote:
Umbrellas?
She was 5th place not 4th. Check the results.
Here are the results from the Footlocker West page:
1) Karlie Garcia
2) Kelsey Braithwaite
3) Makkena Morley
4) Sarah Robinson
5) Jordan McPhee
6) Nikki Hiltz
7) Denise Segal
8) Claire Carroll
9) Camille Chapus
10)Anna Maxwell
11)Emily Nist (Qualified)
Best gunn runner by far, and chooses soccer. Good luck to her in the future.
Qpwoei wrote:
Pretty sure that 100 percent of national U17 soccer team get offered full scholarships. Is she born in 1995 or 1996? Only 2 players on the U17 team are born in 1996, which would make her one of the top 2 soccer player in the nation for her age. But she may be top 2 in the nation for her age in XC also, which is a bit incredible...
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This isn't accurate. 100% of U17 girls DO NOT get FULL scholarships.
My kid knew she didn't want to go to the national. She chose not to even run in the regional. This was her decision and she had her reasons.
footlockerxc1 wrote:
Best gunn runner by far,
I think that the two previous Footlocker finalists from Gunn, one a state champion in cross country and the other a state champion in track, would beg to differt.
Really, how many full scholarships are given every year in woman div 1 soccer across the nation? I was sure that there would be at least 24 and probably more.
How many national team members do get full rides?
Soccer is more fun than cross country.
errryep wrote:
i know several people who have declined nationals personally to be honest with you. its really not that rare i dont think. i would do the same thing in her position. why? because playing on a soccer team representing your country would be a lot more fun. if shes that good at soccer, she probably has a better shot at getting a scholarship for that than running anyway.
This is not true. Footlocker finalists get full rides. I had a girl on our XC team play for the U17 team and get 15% scholarship. There is much more money for XC... less athletes.
Didn't German Fernandez decline to run indoor NCAA's after setting the indoor NCAA record for the mile?
GF is from Modesto. For Cali people indoors is not track. Colleges take off the winter. A few have optional indoor seasons.
This chick looks Asian. I would have thought her parents would try to force her to focus on academics.
Nope wrote:
This is not true. Footlocker finalists get full rides. I had a girl on our XC team play for the U17 team and get 15% scholarship. There is much more money for XC... less athletes.
Where did you get your info that Foot Locker finalists get full rides? My kid was Foot Locker top 5 a few years back with great grades and top 10 national distance track times and certainly did NOT get full ride offers. In fact one notable powerhouse recruited but had Zero money available. A kid finishing top 30 or something at FL nationals might get lots of letters but colleges are not going to be throwing a lot of money at them. Sorry. This is the reality.
not true wrote:
Nope wrote:This is not true. Footlocker finalists get full rides. I had a girl on our XC team play for the U17 team and get 15% scholarship. There is much more money for XC... less athletes.
Where did you get your info that Foot Locker finalists get full rides? My kid was Foot Locker top 5 a few years back with great grades and top 10 national distance track times and certainly did NOT get full ride offers. In fact one notable powerhouse recruited but had Zero money available. A kid finishing top 30 or something at FL nationals might get lots of letters but colleges are not going to be throwing a lot of money at them. Sorry. This is the reality.
Schools can offer 20 full ride scholarships for women's track/cross country for D1 and only 14 for soccer. In D2 they can offer up to 12.6 for track/cross country and 9.9 for soccer. There are a similar amount of schools with cross country programs as soccer programs, so that is a lot more scholarship money right there. Since most schools concentrate their scholarship money in just two or three event areas, their is a lot of money available with full rides very common in cross country/track for women.
100% of footlocker finalist CAN get full ride scholarships if they want one at dozens and dozens of schools, but not always to the school they want to go to. Even then, they are going to get more than the 15% that you mentioned at even the top schools for women.
You are flat out lying that a top five footlocker kid did not get a lot of full ride offers, unless you are talking about a male, which is not what this thread has been about.
Sorry, I just saw that the 15% scholarship was an example given for a soccer player, not your quote.
However, for more logic, a soccer program wants more than 14 scholarship girls on the team and would be more likely to divide up the 14 available scholarships. A track/cross country program COULD get by with having 20 full ride scholarship kids and still have a competitive track and cross country team, especially if they are concentrating on a few event areas. Therefore, it is much more likely a female runner would get a full ride than a female soccer player.
Northener wrote:
Therefore, it is much more likely a female runner would get a full ride than a female soccer player.
If you don't care what college you go to, sure. But I would suspect that it is equally difficult getting a full ride at a top school in either sport. For example, I'm sure that many Stanford runners (or soccer players for that matter) who are on partial or no scholarship received many "full ride" offers at other schools.
Moral hazards wrote:
Northener wrote:Therefore, it is much more likely a female runner would get a full ride than a female soccer player.
If you don't care what college you go to, sure. But I would suspect that it is equally difficult getting a full ride at a top school in either sport. For example, I'm sure that many Stanford runners (or soccer players for that matter) who are on partial or no scholarship received many "full ride" offers at other schools.
Not true if you are a footlocker finalist, which is what this thread is about. Yes, maye if Stanford is the only school you want to go to, you might not be able to get a full ride. However, if a FEMALE footlocker finalist wants to, they can get a full ride scholarship at almost any school, including top ten programs. I already gave the scholarship FACTS that would indicate why a runner would have a better chance to get a full ride than a soccer player, even at the top schools. This isn't a matter of opinion, it is simply a fact based on how many scholarships are offered for women's track/cross country compared to soccer.
I was a D1 coach for many, many years and I know what was happening out there and I also knew what our women's soccer coach was doing and what he was up against with other programs.
I think most kids have more than one or two schools that they would like to go to that fit their needs academically and athletically and if a footlocker finalist wants a full ride and is open to more than just one or two schools, she WILL get a full ride. In fact it is kind of silly when they don't. Kids really limit themselves when they decide there is only one school they want to go to, especially if they let the coach of that school know this is the only school they are looking at. Then of course they might not get a full ride.