Why are Ivy league distance squads so big, and how do they field such good teams given the academic standards?

Shut up Hingle, must suck to be you. way too slow to run at an Ivy League school, and way too dumb to even have gotten nto one based on academics in the first place.

F you, Hingle wrote:

Shut up Hingle, must suck to be you. way too slow to run at an Ivy League school, and way too dumb to even have gotten nto one based on academics in the first place.

Hingle, I know you post these replies yourself. What I don't know is why. I don't know why you're always hating on yourself, focusing on the bad like this.

Say there were two people competing for a spot in an Ivy with the same preferred major. One has a 99.2 average and consistently does better in every class than the student who has a 97.0 average. If the 97.0 average student is a very good athlete, and the 99.2 person is not, it is not unlikely for the 97.0 student to be chosen over the other. As for the workload, yeah, some can still squeak by just because of athletics, and distance runners have a good reputation for work ethic.

An hour a day will get you most of the way.

Dumb Ask

The brutal truth is that Ivy League entrance is more about scholarly nerdism than actual intelligence or aptitude. The successful candidates are the ones who obsess with studying, grades, extra credit, honor societies and all that resume-padding garbage.

That level of obsession makes kids skinny and weak. By the time they reach varsity age, they are so many years behind in muscular development that distance running is the only sport left where they can succeed. They can't do "jock" sports.

not everyone is so stupid that they can only go to oregon clown college

Serious, response...

1) Size - the reason the distance squads are so big is mainly because the sprint / jump groups are so small. Those event groups are small because: a) Ivies are not in good training locations for those events; b) it is generally harder to get sprinters & jumpers accepted into the school (this is because of several more detailed reasons, but, in short, there are fewer sprinters & jumpers that meet the admission standard for the track team...and out of that limited pool, they often go to Princeton)

2) More on Size - the competitiveness of sprinting / jumping in the US college is system is absurdly high, and national-level competition stands to be dominated by only a handful of individuals...most of whom do not have the option to go Ivy (admissions standards, no scholarships, etc.). As an Ivy League school, it is far more realistic to become elite in cross country / relays

3) Academics - Staying enrolled & staying athletically eligible actually is not all that difficult at most Ivies, especially for the population that has been admitted. While some schools are certainly harder than others (Princeton with its thesis, junior paper requirements and grade deflation; Cornell for its general difficulty), some schools are quite easy (Brown, for instance, has no core requirements and gives the option to take any class pass-fail).

4) More on Academics - relative to other sports, track and cross country is among the most conducive to an athletes studies. Although the competitive season spans the entire school year, there are fewer periods of intense time pressure. Distance athletes will generally only have a maximum of two athletic related activities per day (2 runs, 1 lift & 1 run), and many athletes only train once per day. These training sessions are generally only 2-3 hours, often less. Ball sports often have periods of much more intense training. And, most importantly, because track & field training sessions can be completed individually, many coaches allow students some flexibility to reschedule training sessions around academic conflicts (e.g. a coach might oversee the same distance workout three times in one day - once with the main team, once with a small group that had a conflict, and once with an individual who couldn't make the other two sessions).

emerging steeple god? wrote:

Because if the demands of their chosen event area, distance runners are typically top-notch students. So it is not surprising that Ivies have good distance programs.

As for the academic demands, the challenge is getting accepted to an Ivy. Once in, the academic work load is tit.

Not in my HS. Our distance guys are morons.

oh brother wrote:

...there are fewer sprinters & jumpers that meet the admission standard for the track team...and out of that limited pool, they often go to Princeton...

And Cornell!

Which may go a long way to explaining why Cornell and Princeton (the order varies) tend to go 1-2 in the Heps track and field championships. Every. Single. Year.

Harvard and Penn are the other teams that seem to make a commitment to covering all events. No surprise, they're also the ones making the strongest moves upward in standings.

I'm dying, that response was absolutely witty and hilarious. So true.

Rich white kids are more likely to have the educational privilege their parents provide for them to enter elite Ivy schools, distance running is the only thing nerdy rich white kids can do. I bet the basketball and football teams at Ivys suck.

Actually...

MIT is the #1 most difficult academic institution to get into--more difficult than any Ivy.

There are exactly equal numbers of sprints/hurdles and mid-distance/distance on the track team.

There are 300+ pound football linemen that have won academic honors in mechanical engineering, not to mention female hockey players that would probably kick the butts of every poster above. MIT has more total sports than Oregon, possibly more than any other university.

Come up with another excuse. Some kids can do a lot more than distance running.

they accept runners to the school who are above avg in grades and SAT but nothing brilliant and far below what non-athletes got for grades and SATs

an 1100-1200+ SAT and being a superb athlete means you can go Ivy

coach d wrote:

Actually...

MIT is the #1 most difficult academic institution to get into--more difficult than any Ivy.

MIT has more total sports than Oregon, possibly more than any other university.

Isn't MIT D3?

I went to Harvard and the undergraduate education is the same as Oregon, Rutgers, Penn State, Duke, and so forth. Why waste your money.

ok4u wrote:

coach d wrote:

Actually...

MIT is the #1 most difficult academic institution to get into--more difficult than any Ivy.

MIT has more total sports than Oregon, possibly more than any other university.

Isn't MIT D3?

Yes - MIT is D3.

Harvard offers 41 varsity sports, while MIT offers 30.

Acceptance rate at Harvard is 5.9%. MIT is 7.7%. Both are for the Class of 2018.

it is absolutely true that Ivies are hard to get into and very very hard to flunk out of. All those ivy types are smart - getting a B is not much of a challenge for them. So athletes who are ok with Bs have few time problems.

as for squad size - do ivies even have title 9 problems? do they have to hold down mens team sizes for that reason? I suspect that ivy schools have an easier time complying with title 9, but I am guessing there.

I went to Dartmouth in the late 80s and just showed up and ran - I was around 30th of 32 on the team (guessing) - as long as you showed up every day, could keep up, did the workouts and had a good attitude, I don't think lananna did any cutting for xc. I didn't do track.

best I could manage at that point was probably a 10:15 2 mile but I was under no pressure - never conceived that they would cut me. I ran 3 home meets and one away race.

seems to me, you pay 60,000 per year and go to a smallish school, you should be able to bloody run xc and the coach should be able to manage a team of 40 kids. I didn't expect any personal attention (although amazingly, I got it), but cutting a small college xc team at a small school? just seems wrong.