Bottom-tier DI runners, do you wish you'd gone DIII?

Naw. I wanted to run with the big boys, and I went D1 to do that. It didn't pan out, but I had to give it a shot. It would have felt wrong not to.

I can't speak from any personal d1 experience, but having transferred from a rinky-dink d3 school to a good d2 conference, I can honestly say I miss it. Knowing I could have won conferences and qualified for nationals as an individual at my old school kind of stinks while I'm running my best ever and will be hard pressed to break into the top 30 at my new conference.

Totally depends on what type DIII school you are talking about. Many "DI" runners could not make the top 7 at a lot of DIII schools. North Central College beat many Big 12, big 10 and SEC schools. If someone is not on those team's top 7, they certainly would not on the North Central team. In track, it took 14:27 to make the DIII national meet. Many DI teams don't have any one that ran that last year. It is simply not accurate to say that if you are a bottom tier DI runner, you would be running in NCAAchampionships in DIII. That is not true.

Same here. Full ride to Swarthmore, but also full ride to a few DI schools. I chose DI and don't regret it athletically. Academically, yes, but athletically, no.

Midwestrunna wrote:

Totally depends on what type DIII school you are talking about. Many "DI" runners could not make the top 7 at a lot of DIII schools. North Central College beat many Big 12, big 10 and SEC schools. If someone is not on those team's top 7, they certainly would not on the North Central team. In track, it took 14:27 to make the DIII national meet. Many DI teams don't have any one that ran that last year. It is simply not accurate to say that if you are a bottom tier DI runner, you would be running in NCAAchampionships in DIII. That is not true.

I concur. The OP is trolling, if not stupid.

E. Bonix wrote:

Midwestrunna wrote:

Totally depends on what type DIII school you are talking about. Many "DI" runners could not make the top 7 at a lot of DIII schools. North Central College beat many Big 12, big 10 and SEC schools. If someone is not on those team's top 7, they certainly would not on the North Central team. In track, it took 14:27 to make the DIII national meet. Many DI teams don't have any one that ran that last year. It is simply not accurate to say that if you are a bottom tier DI runner, you would be running in NCAAchampionships in DIII. That is not true.

I concur. The OP is trolling, if not stupid.

I'm not a troll. Just a former DIII runner who saw a lot of my peers go DI and either drop out of the sport or keep going just to save the scholarship and ended up hating it. Maybe I should have used the term "mediocre" instead of "bottom-tier." I'm talking about people who never "made it" as DI runners, but could have been outstanding DIII runners.

And yes, I know some people who went DI and they would not have even been good DIII runners, yet they insist they were DI athletes. Hard to be so delusional.

Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

Forget about academics or school location or scholarship money or anything like that.

I'm talking to bottom-tier DI runners (never made your conference XC roster, never scored at conference track, etc.), do you wish you had gone DIII?

Instead of being a little fish in a big pond, you'd have been a big fish in a little pond. Knowing how your career played out, do you wish you had gone to a DIII school, where you would have probably been competing at the NCAA Championships, winning races, and potentially setting school records and such?

I've been out of college for awhile but was a bottom-tier D1 runner.

First of all, why would you forget about academics in this hypothetical - that should be the main factor of the school you are picking in any scenario.

But, no I don't regret it and wouldn't have gone to a DIII school if I had the chance to do it all over. I wanted to stick my nose in there with some of the best and see what I was capable of. That I didn't really contribute much to the team might be something they regret but it is not something that I regret.

I would be interested to see how the last individual cross country nationals qualifier from a decent DIII region would compare to the 7th man on an average DI cross country team - say a team from an okay region that just misses making nationals. Sadly, I am too lazy to try to figure that out.

Unless you love practicing and sitting in your dorm room while the rest of the team travels to meets D1 can be very frustrating for the middle to bottom tier runners.

Imagine you are a top HS and club track star with all the praise and you get to D1 and suddenly you are low man/woman on the totem pole. Your mileage requirement has suddenly gone up 30% to 50%. You never run in any meets and now you are injured due to the added mileage.

Great choice wasn't it????

D2 and NAIA are great options, the academics at many schools is at par or better than D1 schools.

D3?? Well you can't get an athletic scholarship to a D3 school so lets leave them out of the equation

Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

And yes, I know some people who went DI and they would not have even been good DIII runners, yet they insist they were DI athletes. Hard to be so delusional.

Sounds like they are DI athletes.

El Hefe wrote:

Unless you love practicing and sitting in your dorm room while the rest of the team travels to meets D1 can be very frustrating for the middle to bottom tier runners.

Imagine you are a top HS and club track star with all the praise and you get to D1 and suddenly you are low man/woman on the totem pole. Your mileage requirement has suddenly gone up 30% to 50%. You never run in any meets and now you are injured due to the added mileage.

Great choice wasn't it????

D2 and NAIA are great options, the academics at many schools is at par or better than D1 schools.

D3?? Well you can't get an athletic scholarship to a D3 school so lets leave them out of the equation

I think this post really gets at the issue. If you aren't good enough to be on your varsity in XC or to score in track, in D1 you are going to be left home for many meets. Nothing sucks more than doing all the work, having talent, and still not being able to race. Especially because you were likely one of the studs on your high school team.

But, if you are lower tier D1, you are probably going to struggle at any of the D3 teams that are nationals bound as well.

Academics aside, I'd suggest any high schooler look for a team where you have a real shot at getting onto the back part of the varsity as a freshman. Being good enough to matter and having a lot of room for improvement is really what makes college running worth the effort.

fast without the s wrote:

Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

And yes, I know some people who went DI and they would not have even been good DIII runners, yet they insist they were DI athletes. Hard to be so delusional.

Sounds like they are DI athletes.

In a literal sense, yes. But I honestly know people who would not have been close to being national qualifiers in DIII who went DI, and look down on DIII. They say they "aren't a DIII runner." Some people just like telling others they ran DI, even though they wouldn't have been successful in DIII.

Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

Forget about academics or school location or scholarship money or anything like that.

How does one forget about such things? They're a pretty vital part of the college picture. You don't live or run in a vacuum.

I ran on a pretty bad D1 team, and I was one of the slower runners on that team, although I was always good enough to make the travel squad and run in conference meets. I got my doors blown off, but I was there. Our team was never big enough to leave a bunch of guys at home.

Do I wish I'd gone D3 and been more competitive in races? No. I'm glad I got to see how I ranked at the higher level.

Now, if I'd been left sitting at home instead of racing every weekend, my answer would be different.

I was an elite D3 runner on an elite D3 team. I didn't start running until college, otherwise I would have had D1 and D2 options. My x-c team included two guys who went D1 and then came back to their hometown school for various reasons (one was at an Ivy League school and his aid package was cut (he didn't have a scholarship, but he did have plenty of other financial aid), the other was at an SEC school and got into legal trouble).

We competed against D1 schools on the track all of the time, and somewhat regularly in cross country. It was very cool to be one of the better runners and teams in D3, but still get to measure myself against the very best since we ran IC4As, Penn Relays, etc.

I do still wonder, however, what would have happened had I run in high school and gone D1. When I was running my best times, most of my workouts were done solo. The SEC guy ended up hating running because he couldn't live up to his high school hype, so he only ran cross country because he loved the guys. The Ivy League guy ran the steeple, so most of his workout were over barriers while I was running 5k/10k. Our 4th and 5th men simply couldn't push me or the Ivy League guy in workouts.

If I was on a good D1 team where I was the 4th or 5th best 5k guy and was being dragged along on each workout, could I have been in the low 14's, or maybe sub 14 instead of just under 14:20?

At the end of the day though, I wouldn't trade my experience in for a different one.

Similar situation for me. I was a 1:55 guy my junior year of HS, so I got a fair amount of attention. Ended up going D1 (Wisconsin) but by the time freshman year arrived it was clear I wouldn't be racing for the team right away. I hadn't improved all that much and the team was stacked. So I quit two days in. I was there for an education, not to run, so it was a pretty easy decision. Do I regret not gutting it out and seeing what I could have run or run D3 where I could have been the #1 from day one? Not really. I had an absolute blast in college and I don't think that could have been replicated running at a different school. Part of that is Wisco is an incredible college experience. I know I'm biased, but it's amazing. I know you said not to take academics or school location into consideration, but it's impossible not to.

And I've had more fun running post-college than I think I would have had in school.

Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

I'm talking to bottom-tier DI runners (never made your conference XC roster, never scored at conference track, etc.)

This describes me perfectly.

My answer: Absolutely not.

If I went D2 or D3, I would constantly be wondering if I could've made it. Plus going D1 provides so many more perks than the other divisions.

The amount of gear and free stuff I got was way better than what my friends got in other divisions.

Did you know some college teams don't provide free shoes? Ridiculous.

I don't understand this. This isn't like playing DIII basketball. This is track and field. DIII runners compete against DI athletes all of the time. You get to compare yourself to them and to determine if you are on par with them. You can take your best times and compare those times to those of DI athletes. I know that there is no question that when I was at my best, I would have been a scorer at most conference meets as a 8:20 3000/sub 9:10 steeple/sub 14:20 5000/30:20 10,000 runner. I ran against the best in my region at indoor meets at BU and Harvard. I raced IC4As and finished in the top 10. I ran the 5000m at Penn Relays (slow heat) and finished in the top 3. How did being on a DI team but not racing except at home meets better tell you how good you could have been?

da da da da da BATMAN!! wrote:

[quote]Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

If I went D2 or D3, I would constantly be wondering if I could've made it. Plus going D1 provides so many more perks than the other divisions.

Ran for a school that was very much a mid distance school, got to run XC however we were not very good at XC. Was supposed to be a 1500/5k guy in college but was never picked for the travel squad so instead I ran our weakest race, the 10k. I was never great at it ended up running 30:16 and scoring at conferences twice, after college ran the 1500 a couple of times and ya that was not my event but wish I ran d3 since my 10k would have been much more competitive.

da da da da da BATMAN!! wrote:

Big Fish in a Little Bond wrote:

I'm talking to bottom-tier DI runners (never made your conference XC roster, never scored at conference track, etc.)

This describes me perfectly.

My answer: Absolutely not.

If I went D2 or D3, I would constantly be wondering if I could've made it. Plus going D1 provides so many more perks than the other divisions.

The amount of gear and free stuff I got was way better than what my friends got in other divisions.

Did you know some college teams don't provide free shoes? Ridiculous.

Other than free shoes (what's that, like $200/year?) and free gear (maybe another $200?), what are the other perks? Seems like that's a rather small reason to want to run at an entirely different level.

In today's world (and even in the world 20 years ago when I competed), the top DIII runners aren't only competing against other DIII runners in low-key meets. Depending on where you live in the country, there's the Texas Relays, Kansas Relays, Drake Relays, Penn Relays, etc. Plus there will almost certainly be some local DI schools who host meets you can go to. Competition is there if you want it.

And some DIII competition is pretty darn good too, especially if you're in the Midwest or New England areas. And you know what? Having a Saturday meet at a college less than an hour away isn't bad either.