What college do I have a chance of running at

t94bell wrote:

However, the majority of D1 teams will turn you down.

I'm not sure about that. (Literally: I'm not sure.)

There are some poor, and some truly terrible, teams in D1--frequently installed with no purpose other than having the minimum number of "other" teams so that an NCAA school can sponsor basketball.

Take a look at the results from the recent Metropolitan meet at Van Cortlandt Park (granted, a warm day and not a fast course):

The winners were D3 NYU; I *believe* the other eleven teams are all D1. Now, agreed: Columbia and Iona were running their "C" or "D" squads. So let's take them out of consideration and look at the remaining nine D1 squads, all of which (as near as I can tell) were running their best available lineups. Would *any* of those nine "turn down" a guy who'd run 9:41 by his junior year? MAYBE the runner-up, Fordham: it's a serious program and has good veteran coaching--but I'd bet that, even there, a runner like the OP would be welcomed with open arms. A guy who could average 5:30 miles for 8k would make their top seven (in that race)!

All the others, including Rutgers and Manhattan (lo, how the mighty have fallen) had top-five finishers over 28 minutes. Certainly the OP's high school times would make him a valued member of those programs. So he most likely could make eight or nine out of those eleven D1 teams.

MAYBE the Met conference is not representative of D1--I don't know exactly what D1 looks like in the rest of the country--but it certainly suggests that there would be an opportunity for this kid at a lot of D1 schools--maybe, in fact, a majority of them.

The OP (who I actually suspect was trolling) only wanted to know whether he was "fast enough to run in college"--not to get a scholarship, just to make a team. OP, you could probably make at least 90% of all collegiate teams in the USA. Don't worry about it.

Presumably those are times from junior year. What is your senior XC season like (if you run XC better than you run hs track you will be better off as the distance increases even more? Also, how much change was there from sophomore to junior year and how much did your training increase? (e.g., 10:10 with modest mileage as a soph; 9:40s as junior with more mileage but still room for more mileage by high school standards and even more for college is rather promising.) [note: I like this post.]

SCIENCE! wrote:

I ran 1:55, 4:15, and 9:48 in high school. I went DIII and I wasn't an All-American as an individual (once on the DMR as a Soph) until my senior year. I think DIII is a really great choice for a lot of runners, but I think it's unfair to go getting peoples hopes up about how "easy" it's going to be.

Dude, you can totally run in college, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Find a program you like, with people you like, and have fun. No better experience in the world.

Definitely true. There are some crappy teams in BCS conferences.

I'm an East Coaster, so I'll give these examples:

Looking at Big East Championship results: Pittsburgh, Rutgers, and South Florida had guys scoring for them that were running in the 26's for 8k

In the ACC: Miami and BC are perennial cellar-dwellars.

5 BCS schools that assuming the OP improves at an expected curve in college, he could be scoring for in cross country. I'm sure there are countless more in the other BCS conferences.

This is of course excluding plenty of mid-major conference schools he could run at.

D-1 is by no means out of the question.

OP, you should read this article:

http://runningwritings.blogspot.com/2011/12/should-you-think-about-running-in.html

Your times are very similar to mine as a senior in high school. I ran DIII; while you could possibly walk on at a smaller DI school, I think DII or DIII would be more enjoyable and lead to a better running career.

Running on a good d3 team will likely be more enjoyable than running on a bad d1 team.