How to convince kids to join the cross country team

Maybe the problem is that being a skinny nerd in short shorts isnt that appealing.

Welcome to high school cross country.

Can you give some details on the size of your school and general location? The popularity of XC varies greatly per location and even the specific school. As a fall sport, you are competing with football for some athletes, as well, which is a problem. The soccer kids should be, as you suggested, however a good target to recruit. Soccer, which I also coach, uses more running per average field player than any other ball sport.

Also explain that while XC doesn't attract the throngs of fans that football or basketball may, you'll engage in a sport you're more apt to continue post-HS, post-college than most ball sports. And you'll made close friends on your team.

Talk about the loads of cross country girls they will score with.

Southern state- rural county with one small, but relatively wealthy city and two well regarded universities (highly ranked liberal arts college and a mid-sized military school). We have slightly over 1000 students. Football is popular, but the team has always been terrible. We won zero games the last two years and 1 the year before that. Maybe 2 the year before that. Xc has had one state qualifying team, 2 near misses and 3 state qualifying individuals in the same time (good as our roster has never been higher than 20). One of the teams we compete against has sent teams to NXN in the past. We have had xc coach turnover every year thanks to a track coach that is basically a bully. Last year was my second coach and they're staying on, so we want to build a big enough team to strengthen the program.

A Florida Coach wrote:

Can you give some details on the size of your school and general location? The popularity of XC varies greatly per location and even the specific school. As a fall sport, you are competing with football for some athletes, as well, which is a problem. The soccer kids should be, as you suggested, however a good target to recruit. Soccer, which I also coach, uses more running per average field player than any other ball sport.

Also explain that while XC doesn't attract the throngs of fans that football or basketball may, you'll engage in a sport you're more apt to continue post-HS, post-college than most ball sports. And you'll made close friends on your team.

Is there a middle school program? That may be your answer. It is hard to go against the grain in high school. But in middle school, kids are not as self conscious about status and whether they should be doing this activity instead of that. Kids are more likely to stay in XC if they did it in middle school because they will not have any problem identifying as an XC runner.

You can't convince kids to do anything especially Xc because running XC is painful and not much fun.

IT's the same reason why when kids show up for the track team 90% want to run sprints. Why? Because it involves the least amount of work and least amount of pan and discomfort.

Maybe you should watch MacFarlane and get some tips there.

Precious Roy wrote:

Is there a middle school program? That may be your answer. It is hard to go against the grain in high school. But in middle school, kids are not as self conscious about status and whether they should be doing this activity instead of that. Kids are more likely to stay in XC if they did it in middle school because they will not have any problem identifying as an XC runner.

YUP!

Mountain Vista High School in Colorado is a XC juggernaut and the head XC coach is actually a teacher at the middle school next door (that's my understanding). He recruits the kids into XC and then has loads of kids in the program for six years. It's impressive. Dude is organized. It's a factory. All the cool kids seem to want to run xc...kind of snowballs with success.

Direct them towards this message board and have them search for jamin.

Sounds like VA and the Lexington area with Washington and Lee and VMI.

Not sure wrote:

Southern state- rural county with one small, but relatively wealthy city and two well regarded universities (highly ranked liberal arts college and a mid-sized military school). We have slightly over 1000 students. Football is popular, but the team has always been terrible. We won zero games the last two years and 1 the year before that. Maybe 2 the year before that. Xc has had one state qualifying team, 2 near misses and 3 state qualifying individuals in the same time (good as our roster has never been higher than 20). One of the teams we compete against has sent teams to NXN in the past. We have had xc coach turnover every year thanks to a track coach that is basically a bully. Last year was my second coach and they're staying on, so we want to build a big enough team to strengthen the program.

I'm from VA too and Loudoun Valley sure has it going!

Any hot chicks in bun-huggers on your team? If you're trying to recruit a bunch of teenaged guys, using the visual of the gal's team is a good draw.