What makes a good D1 cross country team?

talented runners and strong work ethic

If I had to list the most important factors, they'd be talented runners with strong work ethics.

Its hard for lazy, untalented runners to be good at the D1 level.

To be above average or just make NCAAs:

1. Coach who has done it before.

2. Runners who don't let their strong work ethic drive them to blow up as freshmen.

3. Runners who understand that talent can be the ability to steadily train for 5 straight years.

4. Coach and A/D who understand that the above often takes 20 some odd team members to have 5 ready when it counts.

I have done a considerable amount of research on this topic and have found that, in order to have a good D1 cross country team, the team must be composed of talented runners with strong work ethics.

Hopefully this is helpful to you.

390=4u956 wrote:

To be above average or just make NCAAs:

1. Coach who has done it before.

2. Runners who don't let their strong work ethic drive them to blow up as freshmen.

3. Runners who understand that talent can be the ability to steadily train for 5 straight years.

4. Coach and A/D who understand that the above often takes 20 some odd team members to have 5 ready when it counts.

Are you saying a coach who hasn't done it before can never get there? Then how did anyone ever get there?

bad news bears wrote:

My team sucks. Horrible in cross country. Even worse on the track. We work hard and have a lot of drive, or at least we think so. I want to know what people think the necessary elements are for a team to be good. Not top 10 good, but above average or possibly making it to NCAAs. Other than the gimmes of talented runners and strong work ethic, what makes a successful cross country team?

It really comes down to a very good #1 guy. This guy shows the rest what working hard looks like. In my experience, we had 5 guys that thought they worked hard, and we were above average, but then we got a very good international guy. He showed us that we hadn't actually been working as hard as we thought compared to other top teams. We hadn't been working hard because we didn't know what "hard" was until we saw it.

Also, I think you have to have a group of runners that are all focused on one goal, and will gladly sacrifice their personal life for the team goal if needed. If you have an important team member put a party or a girl ahead of the team goal, I think you have problems.

So, talent and work ethic?

I actually did my dissertation on this and my conclusion was talent followed closely by effort, then a big drop off to dong length as the next most related variable.

Some people are way more cut out for XC than others. Our team has several guys under 14 min for 5K, 30 min for 10K. But we get CRUSHED in XC. Even one of our best 10K guys didn't break 25 min for 8K this past fall in XC but ran 29 min for 10K this track season already. And in years past when we had a team perform well at D1 nationals they don't run nearly as well in track.

1. Good coach who knows what he is doing, and understands that keeping kids injury free is more important than one workout..

2. Consistency.