Fudder wrote:
anyone wrote:you'll never really know how good you could have been...
This is pretty ignorant.
Your potential is based off of your own times.
Smaller schools that aren't super recruiting hubs tend to do better with long term development. This is common sense.
Unless you are supremely talented (top 3% of your state), then any smart D1 coach would not spend the time developing a runner that lacks the talent when they could just drop a dime on someone better.
The elitist attitude behind the D1 diehards is embarrassing.
Ignorant? I don't think so. Debatable? Definitely.
My simple point is that, at a DI program, you're going to have better peers to train with and better competition. I don't think that is debatable.
Whether you respond to the above is debatable. And whether the coaching is better is situational / debatable.
FWIW, my son is a DI walk on for a program that qualifies for Nats about 75% of the time. He's now in the top 7. That's because (a) he's worked incredibly hard, (b) he was underdeveloped in HS, (c) his peers and competition are excellent, so he literally has something to chase after and (d) his coaching and infrastructure is excellent.
While I obviously can't prove it, I think it's very reasonable to believe that he wouldn't be running the times he's running if he went DIII. I don't think that makes me an elitist, just a realist.
But, it could have easily gone the other way. He had several teammates that stopped running because they didn't want to put in the work. Would they still be running if they went DIII? Maybe.
To each his own.