In high school cross country and track, how common was it for people to quit and why?

Exactly5 wrote:

The worst were the football players who were told to go out by the FB coach. Of course they were all sprinters. Of course they were not leaders. Of course, they hardly did any workouts.

This rings very true. Although we never met (so I don't really know), I was under the impression that the track coach was one of the football coaches. Maybe he needed a Spring semester gig but I suspect this kind of thing happens so that coaches can keep an eye on the football players and make them stay in shape. OJ had to run track at USC. Is this the main reason schools have track and field teams?

It takes more coaches to have more runners. It requires more uniforms. It requires more buses. It becomes dangerous on the track and dangerous to keep track of the kids when out on daily runs around town. 50 guys is way more than enough.

parent of studs wrote:

It takes more coaches to have more runners. It requires more uniforms. It requires more buses. It becomes dangerous on the track and dangerous to keep track of the kids when out on daily runs around town. 50 guys is way more than enough.

It sucks for the kids who weren't born with the right DNA

Yes. That is how the world works. The best runners make the team. The best basketball players make the team. The smartest people make the most money. The most attractive get to be models. The best singers make millions. If you want communism, move to a crappy country.

david45 wrote:

Coach watching wrote:

About 1/2 quit because we held cuts after freshmen year. Guys had to run a 6 minute mile and many guys knew they couldn't do it. 50 guys normally made the team.

Why do you have cuts?

Are you kidding? He said, “50 guys normally made the team,” and you’re asking why they had cuts? Wtf is wrong with you?

The first couple weeks of practice, about half the new people who came out quit. After that, people rarely quit. A guy who was running 20 mpw wouldn't be able to keep up with anyone in practice though and would probably struggle to finish some of the runs and workouts because of his lack of endurance. People like that sometimes quit mid season or just didn't show back up next year, esp if they didn't run during the summer.

parent of studs wrote:

Yes. That is how the world works. The best runners make the team. The best basketball players make the team. The smartest people make the most money. The most attractive get to be models. The best singers make millions. If you want communism, move to a crappy country.

Is there anything wrong with equality?

There was a set of twins at my high school - one played football and the other ran cross country. The football player liked to make fun of his brother about how easy cross country was, so the cross country brother finally got his football brother to come try a cross country practice to see how “easy” it really was. It was a practice where we were doing intervals on our hilly race course - I think 1000 meter, or 1 mile repeats. His brother was dieing. After that practice the football brother no longer teased his cross country brother about how easy cross country was.

They quit for many reasons, but what it boils down to are three things

A) not passionate about it

B) not mentally strong

C) injured so badly they can’t run for a long time

In high school XC we had one freshman show up to the first practice of the season, do a few minute warm-up jog, and then started stretching before asking to go to the bathroom. He never came back.

I quit college XC after a couple seasons. As a slower D3 runner I was just running for fun, but as I was getting an engineering bachelors and masters degree in 5 years, it just wasn't worth the time commitment.

CopperRunner wrote:

They quit for many reasons, but what it boils down to are three things

A) not passionate about it

B) not mentally strong

C) injured so badly they can’t run for a long time

It just sucks that the injury thing is something you can't control

david45 wrote:

Coach watching wrote:

About 1/2 quit because we held cuts after freshmen year. Guys had to run a 6 minute mile and many guys knew they couldn't do it. 50 guys normally made the team.

Why do you have cuts?

If I were coaching a HS team I wouldn't have any cuts. I would frame track as as serving two groups: kids who wanted to compete and potentially run on their college teams/beyond, and those who wanted to be outside, get some exercise, develop healthy lifelong habits and knowledge of exercise, etc. -- and that the team would be totally open to both..

Sure you would. What is you are at a school that has 200 kids try out for the boys' team and 200 kids try out for the girls' team? Imagine the danger of having 400 kids running on the track at 4:00 after school? Who is going to manage those kids?

To the person who mentioned that a bigger team meant more resources, more coaches, more buses, etc. -- I get that, though I think my HS would have been glad to have more kids doing sports. I guess in that case I'd try to do automatic entry if you hit a certain time qualifier (so we could field a team, and have a lottery for the remaining spots; I'd also wonder if practices could be open to all but meets limited just to those who hit the standards.

I'm assuming a shiat ton. Why? Because running sucks and the girls have no boobs. Now track and field in the spring is hunny central and they're horny af. HS track meets are basically excuses for kids from different counties to meet and f*ck in the buses. No bs.

We had a number of people quit. Mostly it was due to getting a job and wanting a car. I was in a very working class school, so there weren't many people buying their kid a car. If you wanted a car yo needed a job to pay for it, the insurance, and gas.

I can't remember anyone quitting track or CC unless it was due to an injury. I went to a small private high school of about 250 students where athletics were mainstream, track & CC pretty competitive in our classification and I think most people probably knew what they were getting into when they went out for a sport. The only sport I ever quit was wrestling in 6th grade. I'd just struggled through an entire football season as one of the smallest kids without ever missing a practice and one week of wrestling was enough for me to say no thank you. I actually started running more instead.

david45 wrote:

parent of studs wrote:

Yes. That is how the world works. The best runners make the team. The best basketball players make the team. The smartest people make the most money. The most attractive get to be models. The best singers make millions. If you want communism, move to a crappy country.

Is there anything wrong with equality?

As a mathematical concept?

Viking21 wrote:

david45 wrote:

Is there anything wrong with equality?

As a mathematical concept?

So some kids are destined to never play sports despite wanting to play one?