No monitoring of hs runners when on training runs

We were never monitored in HS.

If any of us behaved as you describe above, I'm sure our freedom would have been instantly throttled.

Worst thing we ever did was scrap an easy run for a game of jail break at a local playground.

Its common for typical generic runs to be unsupervised. Warmups and certainly workouts (repeats, hills, whatever) would be more often done in the direct presence of a coach, in my experience.

SOunds like you have some people on the team that don't need to be on the team. Cut them. Problem solved.

Good to get some perspective. I'm a parent, and back when I ran, our coach who wasn't a runner would drive around to various points on our route to make sure things were staying cool. So I assumed that was the norm. Some of the parents want to blame the coach for their boys' behavior being the result of the general lack of supervision.

If you want to have a large and/or remotely competitive HS XC team, there is no possible way for a coach to supervise all the time. You just have to let kids do the easy runs together. When I was in high school, if the kids were doing something stupid, people in the neighborhoods would call the school to complain, and the coach would get chewed out over it, and then we would get chewed out over it. I believed then and still believe now that most of the people making the calls were whiny and uptight, but I guess it was good that there was some sort of check in place. Besides, it was never a problem for the kids who took running seriously and didn't do stupid things at practice.

We have an assistant coach who runs with our a group every day. He just graduated from college.

Howling Wolf wrote:

...a level of 'free reign' that seems excessive for hs kids.

"Free rein," actually.

"Rein", you are right, though reign isn't entirely inappropriate...

If people are threatening other people they need to be off the team.

Now the "inappropriate" stuff is another matter, if they are doing drugs, then they should be off the team.

If they are banging, as long as they are running the mileage/not complete scrubs(30+ 5k), just let a rumour slide unless they are caught.

" there has been some inappropriate stuff happening out on runs, including packs of boys threatening girls." This is absolutely absurd. I couldn't imagine any boys team in my area doing this. Where is your team located?

The parents of the boys need to be fired immediately.

Take your 40 minute runs to the track. This should solve behavior problems immediately.

We promote a couple ideas in our team culture.

First, most of our longer runs are unsupervised...however specific instruction regarding route, road crossing, pace, etc are given. In addition, the kids are divided into groups each with a cell phone. On out and back runs I might drive out to the turn around.

Second, this level of responsibility comes with accountability. Captains are responsible for the behavior of their runners so if a runner is screwing up, a captain can be held accountable as well. This level of responsibility I'd a privilege that can be lost. I tell my runners all the time that if they demonstrate I can trust them, we can do a lot of fun things.

When I switched to a private school in GA, I was working with a new group of students with whom I had not developed the same level of trust. I sent them out on a 40min training run and heard back from the captains on their return that the kids were hopping into a slow moving train. The captains tried to handle the situation themselves and felt the seriousness warranted letting me know...good move. I suspended some runners until we could hold a parent meeting where we set a road map for earning trust back (until then all runs were done on the track).

I believe that teens make a lot of bad decisions and should be given the opportunity to earn trust back. However, in this situation, threatening the teammates they should be supporting, this trust might have to be earned back in a context beyond the team.

Not that my approach is infallible, but I will share to give you a point of reference. I would bring this to the attention of the AD and Principle and get their support in suspending the responsible parties. Then I would have the administration set the terms for reinstatement to the team, and once they are back on the team, set the terms for trusting them with these lightly supervised runs. The point being, there should be a high bar for reinstatement and whatever is done should have the informed support of the admin first and the parents if possible (I had some great parents, not everyone is so fortunate).

I feel for your situation, it braka my heart to hear of runners who miss out on the unique opportunity for belongingness that I feel only running can provide.

In my experience as a hs coach (and obviously former hs/college runner), it is typical for there to be very little supervision on long runs. Some teams have a coach or parent who will run easy days with one of the groups, but usually that is more about setting an example of how to run mileage days at the correct pace than actual supervision.

In my experience, thus results in the kids training appropriately 95% of the time, with the other 5% of the time they do something relatively innocuous like play wall ball, go get ice cream, or something else not productive, but also relatively harmless. In the areas I have run and coached, I've never heard of a team with a serious issue.

It needs to start with a team culture and expectations. The teams in my experience have all had enough kids who were serious about wanting to train and improve that it would mostly regulate itself. The kids pass on that work ethic to other kids who may not otherwise have it and it becomes the norm. The kids who are highly adverse to working at least moderately hard tend to quit in that environment when they see it isn't just an after-school hangout first and running second.

If the boys team is seriously threatening and harassing the girls team, that is hard for me to even fathom, it is so far outside of the norm in my experience. It would need to be dealt with immediately and should include the AD and vice principal assigned to athletics at the school. Depending on the level of threats and harassment, the police should be involved.

Was the same for me in HS. On one run I begged off the assigned route to see how my dad was doing at home (he'd had surgery earlier in the day) and to check on an MLB playoff game. Next day learned that the assistant coach had gone to the far corner of the route to see who went by. Busted!

Threatening girls is criminal behavior. This is more than inappropriate. Also, the kids have already been suspended. Time to immediately rein in the team.

Having said that, I grew up in the 80's and was on a team that only had track sessions supervised. A couple of times a year our coach was out on the route with his bike. That was enough to keep us honest.

I'm glad to hear you are a parent. I was afraid my daughter had started posting on Letsrun. She has described some issues that could be nothing or could be what you wrote depending on if she wanted us to know.

Our school and XC team has a very large and diverse group of students who were not together in middle school. While our coaches seem to be on top of supervision more than yours, there is still plenty of unsupervised time where all sorts of things could happen.

I know these things happened in my HS 35+ years ago. One thing that seems to have changed over those 35 years is how interrelated the boys and girls teams have become. This seems to have helped overall participation rates but it could be that it requires a higher level of supervision.

We used to have pine cone wars when we did fartleks. The captain participated in it--I later found out that it was tacitly endorsed by the coach as a rest day and team building-just don't get hurt was his only instruction. Aside from injury risk, the most questionable part was that we divided into teams based on race-Hispanics versus Gringos, or as we said, White Tornados versus Dust Devils. I'm not sure the coach endorsed that part.

I'm a parent and when I ran xx the teacher never did any of this nannying.

How old is your kid that he needs his hand holding as a teenager. Bring out the wet blanket in case some kids cut the course or have a smoke behind a tree.

By the way if your kid smokes& you don't know about it it's your fault not the schools.

The main h & safety I would do is make sure the course is true cc & does not cross any roads. The biggest danger is always getting run over so if your coach could drive out the course does not sound like xc & is inherently unsafe.

I didn't run XC in high school, but did XC Skiing and we ran a lot of miles on the roads and trails, running and roller skiing. Our coach was present when we were doing hill repeats. Otherwise he gave us the route and we were on our own to get it done. The first couple weeks he'd drive around some to make sure we were taking the right turns. I think he also probably wanted us to think he was always going to be out checking up on us. After the first few weeks we rarely saw his car.

We never had any real issues with discipline. Sometimes a few of the team members would slack off and cut runs short. I think that's the nature of HS sports, especially for no-cut sports - that you have some team members who are really into it and others that just want to be a part of a team.