Contacting Coaches

Just go on the schools athletic website and send an email to the coach letting them know you are interested as well as much of the information you just presented. Coach's will appreciate the initiative to contact them.

Fill out the school's questionnaire, if they have one. Also, send the head coach or recruiting coordinator an email with a resume. Tell them your GPA, SAT/ACT scores, intended major, running history, contact information, graduation year and any other relevant information. Make sure to proof read it and attack it like you are applying for a job you really want. In reality, you are applying for a job.

You don't know how many times I have received emails from recruits that start off with "Hey Coach, what kind of times do I need to run to get a full scholarship/get on your team". Those emails go straight into the trash. I am sure I am not the only coach who does the same thing.

You can also have your high school coach contact the coaches at the schools you are looking at. I have let kids onto our progam because of recommendations made from a high school coach.

Don't be afraid to try, the worst that someone can tell you is "no". Have fun!

Write the coach a professional email. Don't make it too long but cover what you've said above. The DIII coaches I know will let anyone try out for the team and rarely make cuts for performance reasons. If you are interested in DI/DII then having track times is critical. If you've got enough cc races under your belt an experienced coach can probably gauge your talent but nothing speaks more than a good mile or 3200m time.

You don't do outdoor track because of what? Soccer? The injury? Try to get into a meet or two if you are running anyway. When I was in HS we had soccer players that would mostly just show up to meets and run on the relays or do open 400s/800s.

Yeah thanks for the advice! What types of things should I mention in the email? How long is too long? becasue I don't want to make it so long the coach doesn't want to read it. Also thanks for the advice on making it formal. Will anyone require track times? I currently (and for the past two years) play baseball for school. Baseball is pretty much my only holdover from my life before this year and I love it, but I am better at track and have no chance or desire to play baseball in college. I am on varsity and although it would be tough, if I needed (and I have considered it) I could stop baseball next year and run track instead. My school is VERY against allowing anyone to play two sports at once. Even though I had permission from my track coach (same as the indoor coach) to simply run in meets, and the baseball coach would have approved as well as long as I put priority on baseball games, they still would not allow it. So wondering if those track times would be necessary, and how I would go about getting them if I needed to outside of running for school?

I do think a lot of coaches would like to see some track times. However, if you put in a good summer of training and place decently at XC meets, a lot of coaches can look at results and recognize that they'd want you on their team.

Also, most programs in college (all divisions) would expect you to do all three seasons. So you should plan on that even if you aren't doing that now - and make that clear to the coach.