Do recruits actually care about "development" when they're choosing a school?

Lol GVSU is not a great example of a developmental program. They bring in just as many transfers as the top schools in D1 do. There are kids on that roster who don't have access to a trainer because their top kids need precedence.

In this case it was a 4:22 vs a 4:17, not 4:40 vs 4:25. And the clinician/coach warned about overtraining youth and how he developed slowly. I would have thought he'd be more receptive to take undertrained athletes but again it seems that most D1 coaches want ready made athletes. With the transfer portal, it appears that in most sports, D1 power schools will be taking former D2, and mid major athletes who developed at those institutions.

How much money did they get? It's and expensive school and have a huge team so not much money.

Maximum development as runner should never be that much of a consideration. If you are guy and you end up only running a 15 flat 5k but your max is a 14 flat... it doesn't matter because neither of those times is getting you anything after college.

Both times mean you will be working a real job after college, so get that degree and keep the running in perspective.

There's only room for 2 or 3 in the top 2-3 no matter how you bend.

Malcolm Gladwell has written about it. Every year a lot of kids that was a clear top of their class/school at physics goes to Harward to become great physicists, where the majority of them suddenly finds that no longer being the top dog of the class like they have always been up to that point suddenly takes a big chunk out of their motivation and test performances.

Apparently that's also why so many lawyers coming out of Harvard started their studies there in some completely different field - they transferred along the way as a means to stay on it that prestigious enviroment and not dissappoint their parents too much.

Nick Symmonds' memoirs also deals with the benefits of choosing a lower pressure school - to be a big frog in a small pond vs a small frog in big pond kind of thing. Worked out just fine for him.

I ran a 4:21 1600 on 30 mile weeks in the late 90s and optimized for the best school via US News rankings basically. I don't remember even being recruited by anyone but ran that senior spring when it was too late, was low 4:30s as a jr iirc. which i guess is too slow to be a recruit, even then.

The "pro dreams" of a runner are just so much less than those in other sports, both in terms of financial upside & in # of slots available for professionals. e.g. if you're a d1 basketball player, even if you don't make the nba you may have a shot in europe/asia etc.. how many runners go pro every year out of college? maybe 50?

i'm sure plenty of recruits care about development but it's more personal/oriented toward the college/team experience vs say an elite basketball recruit who is trying to maximize his chances to make the nba.

what assumption are you talking about?

it's not complicated colleges talk a 4 year game then make a 1 year offer.

[kids] need a long term plan but should not base it on the whims of some old man who can cut them if they get injured.

if you want me to trust your plans for my long term development then make me a long term offer.

I am a current NCAA athlete and my priorities for recruiting differed hugely between high school and when I transferred halfway through undergrad. I wish someone would have told me the importance of development in high school. No promises that it would have sunk in, but the most effective way would probably have been direct comparisons of high school and college performances on each roster. As a high schooler, it was easy to look at a DI program with high level athletes and not absorb the fact that very few of them actually improved from high school and many more ended up burnt out.

In original recruiting, I was definitely blinded by the prestige of historical power programs, but did also strongly consider location, academics, and team environment. In the end, I chose the “best” program I could afford with a small scholarship + loans over slightly lower tier options that offered me more financially. I then transferred after my sophomore year following injuries, a (bad) coaching change, and unproductive training.

The second time around I felt like I had a much clearer idea of what I truly wanted and needed to be successful. And unfortunately I think that kind of perspective had to happen through trial and error. My priorities were
1. A development-focused program that showed marked improvement in their recruited athletes and had major potential for team advancement within the next 1-3 years. This was a big one, everyone wants to go to xc nats and compete at high level meets. That being said, my chosen team didn’t make xc for two years after I got there. We have since become a consistently ranked team. Trajectory is important. Showing concrete improvement with current athletes is huge.
2. A training location and philosophy that I knew would be effective for my needs. (Including coaches willing to invest long term in a plateaued injury-prone headcase).
This landed me in the “less fast” state school of the area that was still a large-ish DI. The program has since gotten several more transfers similar to me and has significantly developed most of them. We don’t have a lot of the flashy facilities, resources, or gear, but we have excellent retention of athletes because they buy into the program and see very real personal improvement and investment from the coaches. No one leaves for the bigger schools when they get “fast.”

As a coach, keep doing what you’re doing. Develop athletes, maybe take a chance on transfers who tried a power program and realized it was not the environment they needed. For every talent that turns you down to go be a non-scorer at a big name school, you’ll find someone willing to trust your process. Source: I transferred in with a low 17’s 5k, race anxiety, and a stress fracture and will be in Austin next week. I would not leave my current program for anything.

That’s really interesting. I wonder if the “good recruiter” coaches often struggle to have their athletes improve, because when it comes right down to it, they either don’t know or aren’t interested in learning about how to help it athlete improve physiologically.

The "good recruiter" coaches typically just recruit new athletes to replace the ones who fail. It's not that they don't know how to develop, they just don't have to do it when they can get two or three studs to transfer each year.

I’m glad you all have become more thoughtful. I took the only full D1 scholarship offered. That’s how I decided.

Who could blame you? College is expensive. You gave your folks a break, and got through with zero debt.

You must have been very good. Steve Magness went a 4:01 mile in high school in the early 2000s, and I remember him saying that some of the offers he got weren’t even full scholarships. That struck me at the time as disrespectful. After all, he put in an enormous amount of work to run that time, and was without a doubt the best high school miler in the country at the time.