Starting to freak out a little that college coaches aren't paying attention

Unless you are literally a distance god (sub-4:10/sub-9 as a JUNIOR), no coach will bother to reach out to you. YOU need to do the legwork and contact them. You also need to express your interest in their school in particular. Keep talking to coaches.

cast a wider net with your contacts. If you break 4:10 in April, maybe there'll still be some money left for you. dyestat alone lists 622 high school runners under 4:20 (511 under 4:19) in the 1600m in 2014. That is not counting many others with faster mile or 1500m times. Competition is very tough these days.

dsfgdsfg wrote:

Unless you are literally a distance god (sub-4:10/sub-9 as a JUNIOR), no coach will bother to reach out to you. YOU need to do the legwork and contact them. You also need to express your interest in their school in particular. Keep talking to coaches.

Pretty much this. Coaches are too busy trying to reel in the top competitors to pay attention to run of the mill 4:20 milers. You will need to do some work yourself to see results. Also, make sure you mention your training. If you ran those times off low training, they might be more interested.

Wiki says there were 340 division 1 schools in 2012-3 and that 128 of them were 1-A bowl schools.

There are a lot of 1-AA schools that give very little scholarship money to track.

The local mid-major and smaller D1 school most likely believe you are fielding offers from one of the upper schools and they would be wasting their time. Even if they feel like that is a stretch, they do not want you to expect a full ride so there is no reason not to approach you after you get in.

Is there a reason that your competitors look really good to the local schools?

Their siblings/parents went there.

They are unlikely to get into academically competitive schools.

HSsenior wrote:

I am a senior in highschool watching my competitors sign with D1 schools. I am pretty good, 4:19 1600 (junior) and 15:33 xc 5k. I would think at least the local mid-major or smaller D1 coaches would reach out to me. Yes, I have emailed and called the coaches, they seem to say, "good job, we will see how you progress." What is going on? Am I basically sunk?

What's your goal? Admission to a school you couldn't get into purely on academics? A scholarship?

Your times are good, but not of a caliber where you'd be getting significant D1 scholarship $. Only the elites get the big bucks, especially as Freshman. Case in point. I know a FL qualifier that is getting $10K to go to a better D1 program.

At my knowledge, mid-major and smaller D1 programs aren't usually fully funded for all 12.6 scholarships. And, they're typically less desirable schools academically than their larger counterparts (and vs D3).

I don't think your times are going to get you preferential admissions because those decisions have essentially already been made (i.e., they're almost always done via Early Decision / Early Action, which is going down now). If you've submitted an ED/EA application and haven't heard back, call the coach(es)--today!

Beyond that, what you're left with is walking on to a good program then proving yourself. Then, $ could be coming your way as you score points in conf meets, regionals, NCAAs, etc.

The other option is D3. There are some truly amazing schools (e.g., Williams, MIT, CMU, Johns Hopkins, Haverford, Wash U, Chicago) that would love to have you. They generally work on ED/EA timeframes, too. But, you could still work the phones and go Regular Decision.

Good luck!