D1 runners thoughts on D3 running

D1 academics wrote:

The ratio of brand name D1 schools compared to brand name D3 schools is about the same as the ratio of top D1 runners and D3 runners. Every power 5 school has name recognition while only about 5-10 D3 schools do. Add all of the Ivy Leagu schools to the D1 list also and they don’t even offer scholarships.

Lol d1 dbag wannabe. You likely never cracked 5 mins or 10 mins so crap all over someone else. Waytogo but you got the attention you wanted. The funny thing is you probably swept the floor and cleaned the jocks of those that really did contribute to your team, if you really were on one.

Bottom line is that D3 and D2 athletes are just as good as D1 but D1 runners can't accept that so crap all over everyone else.

I ran at a Power 5 school in college and have coached at a couple of DIII's now. As an athlete, I respected DIII since we had a strong DIII conference in our area that many of my high school teammates and rivals ran in. I did not, however, put the same weight into the title of being DIII national champion or All-American since most of our JV squad could have been DIII All-Americans. If you are DIII All-American, that basically just gave you my respect as being good enough to be on a DI team. If you won the DIII title with a mark good enough to be DI All-American, then I am impressed and give your title more weight.

After coaching at a couple DIII's as an assistant, I lost a lot of respect for DIII in general. I respected the dedicated DIII runners who were getting the most out of their talent with less resources to work with. As a coach just walking into this programs for only a few years each, I heard a lot of people at DIII schools go on about how great DIII is because they're just there for the love of the sport, DIII is more about academics, DIII is more dedicated, DI runners are just there for the money...etc. This could not be farther from the truth. Very few runners I coached at these DIII schools were anywhere near as dedicated to the sport as anyone on my DI team and their grades were also lower than the average at my DI school and their classes were easier at the DIII. Also, DI is way too demanding with very few people getting large scholarships for athletics alone to be in it just for the money. If that's the only reason you're there, you likely won't make it through four years in the grind...DI takes love for the sport and dedication to make it through the grind and have success in the sport. So after these experiences, I have less respect for DIII as a whole, but I do respect the individual DIII runners who really are dedicated. I've also noticed a lot of DIII runners have a chip on their shoulder for not getting recruited by whatever DI or DII they wanted to go to, so they can come off as arrogant which also makes me lose some respect for them.

Former Power 5 wrote:

I did not, however, put the same weight into the title of being DIII national champion or All-American since most of our JV squad could have been DIII All-Americans.

As a coach just walking into this programs for only a few years each, I heard a lot of people at DIII schools go on about how great DIII is because they're just there for the love of the sport, DIII is more about academics, DIII is more dedicated, DI runners are just there for the money...etc. This could not be farther from the truth. Very few runners I coached at these DIII schools were anywhere near as dedicated to the sport as anyone on my DI team .

I also have similar experiences- in running DI and (assistant) coaching DIII

There should be different titles. You shouldn't be called a "national champion" or an "all American" in DIII because you simply are not one. I find most "good" DIII runners are shocked to hear how common 14:10 guys are, and have no concept of what becoming a DI AA really means.

I also find this attitude about the money in DI. DIII runners love to harp on how they don't get money, and their programs don't get money. They act like they would all be as competitive if they had the same resources, but they had the chance to prove themselves in high school and didn't. They also seem to have very little understanding of the commitment of being a DI runner- not just in terms of training, but the whole lifestyle. Its a level of dedication that is very rarely seen in DIII

You guys saying that D3 are scum etc, what a bunch of jack. You probably walk around campus saying you won state too but you were in some little b hole division or group so weren't really the state champion right. It's ok to fess up. We know the truth. You secretly hate yourself so you whiz on D3 folks.

This is ignorant. A D1 may give you 2k in athletic scholarships while a d3 gives you 30k in academics. Money is money. The scholarship card is just lazy thinking. College XC is not college football!

Let me Know wrote:

As a former D3 runner and a very passionate D3 fan, I am curious what Divison 1 runners think of Divison 3 runners and running. What are your honest opinions? Do you respect it? Do you think its a joke? Let me know, I am a D3er through and through and absolutely loved my experience!

Starts with an 'h' and ends with an 'r'.

Exactly. Plus, many D1 programs just suck. My brother ran for Valparaiso. I could start in the Chicago suburbs and start moving outward and give you 20 D1s that would not qualify for d3 nats in xc. I now live in Iowa and know that UNI got beat this year head to head by a d3. Top of D1 is dirty good...but most teams ain't nothing.

Something that hasn't been really mentioned is that running can be a tool to get into academically elite d3 schools that you otherwise wouldn't be academically qualified for.

Sliding Scale wrote:

I was DI and work with DIs.

On the way back from a meet I once had a conversation with a girl who had developed from a very average All State (small state) HS athlete into a DI All-American. She could not grasp why athletes bothered with DIII.

It made a little more sense to her after I reminded her that in high school and before she moved onto a big college scholarship she too ran for the competition and enjoyment of the sport. Somewhere along the line it became about the money.

DIII is for guys who like to run and can't get a scholarship to do it. I think that is what most people think of the level.

I have always been more curious about athletes who walk on to scholarship level teams...why not go somewhere you can contribute?

Like Ed Moses?

Maybe D 3 is for athletes who have a more practical and pragmatic expectation of their future in 6 years.

I ran D1 for Chicago State. My buddy ran for DePaul at the same time. D3s beat us weekly. If you're from Midwest and east coast, the small private schools are GAF. Certain geographic regions don't have a lot of D3s. Round here they're legit.

I did both. I run because I love to run and was not good enough for an athletic scholarship. I got an academic scholarship to a D3 school and went there for free for 2 years. During that time, I matured physically and got used to racing 5 miles for CC but was not a standout. Our team made it to the D3 XC nationals so we were a pretty good team. I transferred to a D1 school with a very reputable program (NCAA D1 XC top 5 when I was in HS). I went there for the Engineering School, so my reason was purely academic. I had 3 top school choices and one coach said I could walk on so that influenced my choice. Back then they did not have roster limits like now (Title IX limiting opportunities for males to make it look like equal opportunity for females). I continued to progress and got to do some traveling, but never beyond the conference meet.

My perspective of "fast" changed when I transferred to D1. At the D3 school we had a guy we thought was the pinnacle of running (3:48 1500 to 30:30 10k). At the D1 school there were 6-10 guys on the team that could run those times in a given event and a couple of guys would not even have considered that D3 guy a threat on a bad day (like D1 29:20 All Region XC guy). Consequently, I got faster as I saw what was possible and got better training with better team members.

Now, due to Title IX warped interpretation and enforcement, a guy like me would not be able to even walk on. Even though my final times in college would still qualify me, my entry times were below today's standards for a lot of D1 schools. I think that is a shame because, let's face it: 99% of us are running for the fun of it. I was able to progress to the level of D1 traveling. Some never did even after 4 years of trying, a decent number gave up after a while.

I loved running at both places. Both were experience I would never want to have missed. I still keep in touch with a handful of my college running friends 25+ years later. If I saw any of those D1 standouts or D3 guys now or even the guys who quit or never traveled at the D1 school, we'd laugh and give high fives and talk about the good times.

I noticed this as well where many of the DIII runners I coached did not have a good understanding of the range and depth of talent in the sport and that what was "good" for our crappy-average level DIII conference (we weren't in one of the good DIII conferences) was not even considered fast at higher levels. Some girls got offended when I displayed shock at learning our indoor 4x400 record was only like 4:25 and told them we needed to beat that record this year. They honestly had no idea that that time is a pitiful school record that many high school JV teams could beat. The same team thought our 1:59 800 guy was an All-Star and some even asked if he had a good shot at making nationals (which obviously he didn't that year). I also second the comment above about not understanding the commitment level required to make it at DI. I probably only coached 2-3 athletes at my DIII schools that displayed anywhere near the level of commitment that majority of my DI teammates had (ie the healthy lifestyle etc.) The administration at DIII also often tended to make excuses and complain "we're just DIII so we can't..." instead of finding ways to get results. I also commonly hear complaints about how it wasn't fair how a certain state has tons of DIII publicly funded state schools that we "just couldn't compete with." Our DI didn't have the nicest facilities compared to other DI's and the weather in our area was no favorable for training year round, yet we found a way to get results instead of making excuses. I didn't see that type of drive at the DIII's I worked at (including the DIII team that won a conference title.)

I don't have any less respect for Nick Symonds because he went to a D3 school. If you're fast you're fast. D3 athletes have opportunities to compete against D1 runners at invites and if you beat a D1 runner generally you're better then they are. But as a whole D3 is much less deep than D1. Multiple D1 conferences would beat the entire D3 is you did a dual meet between the D1 conference and the best of D3. Being a D3 All-American or champion does not hold the same level of regard as that accomplishment at the D1 level.

The level of emphasis on the athletic aspect of the student-athlete mix is much higher in Division 1 than D3.

I would agree with this to an extent. I ran at the top DIII distance program in the country, and our approach to training and lifestyle was much different than what I knew other DIII programs were doing. That being said, that's why we were good and why we routinely beat Division I, II, and III programs when we had the opportunity to race, but I recognize that my experience was a lot different than 99% of DIII.

That being said, the major downside of being in a dedicated DIII program is that even when you start to become pretty good for DIII (14:20-30 and 30-30:30), the opportunities to race at big meets and drastically improve your times are still few and far between due to budgets and name recognition. My last two years in DIII were frustrating due to that reality and I began to resent running in small meets against my teammates every week.

Anyways, any rationale DIII runner will surely recognize that our National Championship and AA's are not of the same caliber as DI & DII, which is fine because DIII operates on a completely different level in terms of budget, resources, and overall talent pool. I'll note that the upper echelon of DIII runners are more than capable of running on the majority of DI programs in some capacity. While they won't be studs in DI, a lot of the top 30 DI programs have steady 14:30 and 24:30 8K XC runners.

I was on a decent but not great D3 team. We were never in contention to win our conference and never made nationals. We went to a big invitational my senior year and beat 13 D1 teams.

I respected North Central as a team but didn’t pay attention to D3 outside of them.

Well said. I agree that the top DIII programs in the country (such as North Central) seem to be far more dedicated and train at a much higher level than most DIII's, so I have much more respect for the athletes on those teams than the vast majority of DIII programs. I also experienced similar frustrations with lack of access to good meets for my top DIII runners who were good enough to walk onto some DI teams. I feel like the midwest is very competitive for DIII, particularly in the distance events, but since we were in another region of the country with less depth in DIII distance, we only had a few meets a year with the competition needed to help my guys try to even break 15 min for 5k or 33 min for 10k. There were a few higher level meets in our area that would offer that competition, but often those schools wouldn't let DIII kids in their meets or our guys didn't have good enough seed times to get in their meets, but at the same time were better than majority of the DIII runners we raced against in our area, so they were stuck in between.

I ran D1 and went from walk-on to NCAA finalist. Never quite got a (first team) AA. With my time I could have been a 10+ time AA in DIII and probably would have won at least one national title.

From my perspective, if you are fast you are fast. The division you run in doesn't matter. If you have competitive times, I respect you. But I always just kind of scoffed at DIII AA awards. I would run with DII and DIII guys when I went home for the summer, and they would be multi AA's and couldn't fathom the level of competition at DI. A 14:00 5k guy was like a superhero to them. While certainly a good runner, 14:00 for 5k gets you jack squat as far as DI awards go.

OLD AND FAT summed it up. D1 runners respect D3 runners if they run fast like the occasional guy that will run around 14 flat for 5k. A D1 runner doesn't necessarily respect the competition of another D1 runner if they are not fast and in a low-level D1 program that doesn't have anyone good. But it was always kind of annoying when D3 runners would rack up all of these All-American awards and are advertised as All-Americans when they would get beat by a ton of D1 people that never were All-American because the difference in competition. Run sub 14:20 5k and you're probably All-American in D3, Run 14:20 in D1 you're not going anywhere special.