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They are trying something new, increasing the emphasis of xc season and decreasing that of indoor. If xc is equal to outdoor (for distance runners) why is the season so short.
The thing about that is though that it is a lie.
There's a D2 festival this year. All the D2 championships are held within the same few days in Louisville.
edward teach wrote:
They are trying something new, increasing the emphasis of xc season and decreasing that of indoor. If xc is equal to outdoor (for distance runners) why is the season so short.
Wrong. It's because it's a festival year.
Every 4 years DII has a Fall Sports Festival where they have the National Championship for a bunch of sports in the same place. It's a cool concept, in theory the soccer players, field hockey players, etc get a chance to watch the XC Championship races and vice versa for XC, good cross-sport support. In practice not sure it really works. (Maybe, maybe not.) They rotate a different season each year so next year will be a winter sports festival (2016) then 2017 will be a spring sports festival then 2018 back to fall sports.
Not a fan of the late season...makes it hell with training at 4:45pm after labs get out makes for a lot of running on the roads in the dark. I wish our coach's association lobbied a little harder for a sports festival on the traditional XC finals dates for the sake of our student-athlete safety.
D1starshot wrote:
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It's for the festival.
We "the USTFCCCA" D2 xc coaches have LOBBIED our rears off to get OUT of the Festival rotation for many reasons. Trust me it's no picnic dealing with the NCAA. We've tried MULTIPLE times and proposals. Blame it on the athletes, they're the ones who fill out the comment cards saying they like the festivals. The coaches association voted at nearly 100% to oppose it and didn't want xc to be part of it. Our team we on campus together training on Thanksgiving.
Soooo mornings don't work? Track doesn't have lights? And what team practices starting at 4:45?
It's one extra week, seriously what's the big deal?
The Donger wrote:
Soooo mornings don't work? Track doesn't have lights? And what team practices starting at 4:45?
It's one extra week, seriously what's the big deal?
I like it. One extra week of cool weather for xc instead of a blazing inferno summer week. I always liked being on campus when no one but athletes was around too, so I wouldn't mind missing "thanksgiving break" and I think most athletes wouldn't either. If anything, they should have this festival another week later than its currently scheduled and hold it in Florida or CA.
Maybe you should do something. wrote:
Our team we on campus together training on Thanksgiving.
Is this common for teams that qualified? Personally I think it'd be a pretty big bummer to be hanging around an empty campus and having a sandwich or eating KFC on Thursday rather than being able to go home. Why not just give the runners a workout schedule and let them do it on their own?
CA State meet is Saturday. HS nationals are in 2-3 weeks.
So you're complaining about going to nationals? Don't go then.
The Donger wrote:
CA State meet is Saturday. HS nationals are in 2-3 weeks.
So you're complaining about going to nationals? Don't go then.
What's your point? The high schoolers running nationals are all training on their own this weekend. If the meet was actually this weekend then yeah, you'd be traveling to it on Wednesday and/or Thursday and wouldn't be able to go home. That's different than staying on campus to train.
MYSDS - Thanks for trying!! I've asked this question of other DII coaches a few times (not recently) and could never got any answers that showed much concern for the later date when it's part of the festival. Good to hear that has changed. Probably the biggest concern I heard was that when the DII Championship is so late it overlaps with the start of Indoor, which a bunch of coaches told me they hated.
Donger - No, mornings don't work for team training this time of year either, although we do some smaller group morning workouts. Classes start at 8:00am, so I need to be done with training by 7:30. When daylight savings kicks in we don't get sunrise until 6:30 and by late November it's after 7:00. As far as training on the track, I wish. We don't have a track team, ergo no track. You're right, it's really no big deal, we get the miles/workouts in. I just see it as an unnecessary risk that the NCAA puts our student-athletes in as a consequence of DII Nationals 2 weeks after DI/DIII/NAIA. As far as "who has team practice at 4:45", we didn't used to but our academic schedule changed a few years ago. Used to be most of our runners were out of class/lab by 3:45, in fact when I started coaching 14 years ago it was 3:15. When they revised our academic blocks the last "out of class" time changed to 4:35 with labs going to 4:30.
E T - Not sure I see how having XC Nationals/Regionals/Conference 2 weeks later changed anything on the front end of the season. We started team preseason the same weekend we always do, and we opened racing the same weekend we always do. Did other DII schools start later than usual?
Sorry if I sounded like I was complaining. I love XC, I'd be psyched if we went into March and had a fall championship and a winter championship. It's just that when daylight savings kicks in I feel like it throws a wrench into our routine and where we're located I worry about the safety of our runners on the roads in the dark. Most years it doesn't feel like that big a deal, but this year it's 5 weeks.