D1 confusion

here's the deal. he told them the golden numbers. all these little proxies are guessing at the numbers. what does the team run now. what did they run in HS. school standards years old. some website. etc. he has unusual clarity straight from the horse's mouth. he just doesn't like the answer.

what i learned/did was contact a ton of schools with the qualities you desire that might make sense. keep the ones who respond well. you don't force the ones that don't like you to change. you go with the flow.

to me the ones who are pushing this tend to be prestige chasing kids trying to use sports to get admitted. i get why someone would chase, say, harvard. and might get grouchy if the coach strung them along. but the reality is, that coach is telling you, if you want to go there, you are on your own. you get admitted by yourself. you run the times. and then he'll talk. and if you apply there it's at risk you don't make the times or get on the team. period. that's probably more of an academic decision than a sports one, and it's often arguably trying to use running as a way to get around some tiny admissions rate. hence the gruff response as you're like, darn it, he's not helping my kid even though this strategy should have worked on paper.

this is reality. go to the ivy down the street. maybe they want you kid. so to speak.

Thank you! I obviously don't have the expertise many do on this forum so I suppose my questions might seem dumb/funny.

Yes, I know there's a huge pool of boys with similar times (he's been to couple national/regional meets and they are legion, haha). He's realistic too, he knows he's not going to break 4 in high school (or ever) or anything outrageous. He just would love to run at the DI level if possible and have that experience. He loves the sport, that's the bottom line.

4:15 today isn’t 4:15 5 years ago. HS times have dropped significantly and the game has changed. Your son doesn’t want to be the weakest one on the squad, barely hanging on and in danger of losing his spot every year. We know so many runners in that boat. They don’t race much. It’s a lot to put in 50 weeks of training to sit at home while your teammates bond and race. Go where you’re wanted.

Not dumb or funny. Always good to ask. And don’t hesitate to ask more. We’ve just been doing this and talking about it for years.

A lot has changed in a year (heck in a month) with the House settlement.

Why do you assume the coach is stupid or incompetent? College athletics in the last 6 months has gone through a major upheaval. It is not the same as it was a year ago. Rosters limitations and maybe budget rollbacks are a factor now.

Consider that 496 junior boys that have run 4:19 or faster in the 1600m this year according to milesplit. Times have really ramped up, and the NIL lawsuit and settlement have changed the game significantly. The major DI schools near me (NC) aren't really taking anyone slower than 4:12 this year. You need to be faster than kids on the *existing* roster.

You didn't tell us what the conference or team times are. Look in Tfrrs. Let us know what 10th best in the conference is or what 3rd best on the team is. High school times are irrelevant. Rosters are shrinking. Coaches are able to get fast kids through the portal.

standards for spots on teams are ever changing. If freshman me was to tryout against the current runners on my college team, I would not stand a chance. Even though I was a recruited runner.

yes the landscape is changing fast.. all coaches who work with high school kids are having to update their kids on what is required to run at specific colleges now relative to one year ago (house ruling) I work with high school kids in this situation each year, our state school would take 4:12/9:04 juniors (books scholarship/ roster spot) one year back and 4:16/9:16 just a few years ago.... where 4:08/8:56 junior is not enough now (housing ruling effect + faster kids). College sports is business., and more so now than before. Who plausibly can provide points at conference within a few years is an important metric.

There are still opportunities for 4:19/1:55 juniors at D1 but they may not be cost effective ( patriot league is D1 and will have 1:55/4:19 type incoming freshman on the rosters ) but are those school affordable? ( very much so for a someone with sub $80,000 family income, and limited assets, and also affordable for those with money as not an issue). good academics also there.

It may be a good strategy pursing what would be the right college (financial match for family/ academics match for athlete) if one was not running. This is what I advise my athletes and their parents . Then we work back from there adding running to the mix and looking for colleges coaches/potential teammates where they see themselves comfortable independent of the coaches/teammates running success (that is my advice in a nutshell).

The kids that will survive and thrive will choose the right school for them if they were to get cut. Rosters are a shuffling deck now. Life is not running and life goes on.

Francee72 ....Best wishes to you and your son

Very helpful, thank you! I have been telling my son-first look at a school you would attend anyway that could provide some academic aid (he's a strong student) then look at schools you would like to run at and see what middle of the Venn diagram looks like! So he has emailed all those schools and has had a couple responses but not any in his top 10. He's had a robust response from DIII and maybe soon he will see one of these could be a great situation for him, if they offer financial aid. We could provide some out of pocket but not at these schools with exorbitant tuition and fees. COA is a critical factor for him. We will see!

The only thing I can say is that no parent, high school athlete, high school coach, or outside individuals know what is going on inside a program. If the college coach has been told he can not have many more athletes then he may not want to recruit a development athlete. There are so many aspects that go on inside every collegiate program. If you feel the coach is being honest with you even though you may not feel its "fair" then that is what you have to go on. Plus, no parent can be unbiased about their child. Very often I would call high schools coaches who competed against a certain school and ask them what they felt about a particular athlete. Some times I got responses that I would never have gotten from the parent, coach, or athlete. Good luck and there are many great schools and coaches out there.

You aren't making sense. He could go to almost any D3 school. And a D1.schhool who would take him wouldn't be top 100.

i play a game with a college soccer coach/scout present. he gives me feedback after and says i either won't make the team or would only get a walkon tryout. something like that. i get rationally i might disagree with the analysis. but it's pointless because the point to recruitment is concrete, ie, do you want me on your team. yes. no. maybe.

i think it helps if we reword this coach's answer as, "no, but if you get accepted here (without my help) and improve to x/y times, give me a call and i might reconsider."

it's debatable strategy/risktaking to give a school like this much say where you end up, but it's literally dumb to be like i want to argue with the coach about the explanation given for "no." setting aside roster limits and shifting needs, he could even be a jerk moving the goalposts on purpose and there's no point in arguing because there is no "can i speak to your manager" that you can "karen" here.

i think at least one thing you're missing here is there is no concrete commitment even if you hit the numbers. i would hope he would fulfill the implied promise but if all he promised was "give me a call" then he'd say he could tell you then "unfortunately we're full up." or move the goalposts. the basic point is i wouldn't give that one coach much power whether i have a team next year. i'd either dump that skillet contents in the trash, or stick it on a back warming burner that i check on if i have no other dinner cooked next march. which is unlikely.

the reason i tossed around harvard or some other ivy is he was throwing around "elite" and claiming the coach gave him standards probably better than anything nescac and most patriot, but not near SEC or ACC type times.

you don't banter with the weird school. you try weaker ivies, patriot, big east, nescac, UAA, claremonts. you line them up. you leave the "give me a call later" school sitting way off to the side. or i tossed them when i was looking. i wanted to play. i didn't want to use sports for admissions. i wasn't interested in holding on to the risky last minute to maybe be the last player on the team. i mean, the soccer equivalent at my d3 played about 10 minutes all season, in blowout games.

unless, like i was saying, the idea really is to get in that particular ivy by "being on the track team," in which case the ambitious naive strategist might throw a stomp fit that marginal admissions plus not quite good enough times is neither an admissions nor sports recipe. the coaching admissions help is if you are a god for that conference, not for the worst walkon.

he has 100s of options if he's an average student or wants d1 that bad. the tell that's probably not his situation is "elite," and a mix of d1 and d3 (probably nescac, uaa, maybe something like hopkins or MIT). an average student would have more d1 options as they wouldn't be hung up on academics and prestige.

if you want prestige academic d1 it's patriot and big east below the ivies. or something like rice. a lot of the ivy plus that people like (duke, vandy, UNC, UVA, UT) are SEC/big 12/acc and harder or similar, not easier, than ivy for sports.

also, the OP doesn't mention what their kid runs XC, and it looks to me like some of the 415 ivy kids could run like 15 flat or faster in XC 5k. the OP misses that at his spot in the pecking order, they are hunting for some use for you, maybe XC, maybe steeple. if his XC times are meh then he's really more a mid-distance specialist who needs to be faster at his specialty than your usual XC fodder.

I have no idea why you are getting such long answers to this question.

The situation at this school is different now than when those who are currently on the team were recruited. It's as simple as that.

The reasons why they are different are many but that doesn't really matter here.

I sympathize because we just went through this (and kind of still are). My son got some looks and small offers (low 15s in xc and placed pretty well at the state meet and regional Footlocker). He ended up going to his local D2 and having a pretty solid freshman year (around 14:15). I think he's settled and will probably stick around, but may want to grad transfer (will probably graduate in 3 years, so he's not sure whether to go 3 and 1 or try to throw a redshirt in somewhere).

Anyway, I don't know if he's in any better position after dropping nearly a minute this year. There are so many kids running 14:15 it's nuts! And, with roster limits, etc. it's just a game changer. Anyway, I just wanted to hop on and let the OP know he's not alone. Things are changing as we speak and the game is really hard to figure, I think.