No...if anything a community where 75+ kids come out for one gender should just get more volunteers. You are in an area with runners. Probably lots of joggers willing to help.
HS sports should be more accessible; if anything I've thought large schools should have more teams in a sport. Have a varsity program and a JV program and four third-string class year specific programs for athletes not on track to be varsity in every sport where you have the interest (avoid cuts wherever possible). HS sports should be educational (healthful, and team oriented and fun).
That still leaves room to be competitive, for top athletes. There is also nothing wrong with a 7 man roster for Qualifying rounds and State.
Yep, did the club swimming scene with my own kid. I get it. We controlled the level of participation in both practice and meets much to the chagrin of the coach who thought everyone should be doing what the Olympic Trials qualifiers should be doing. Not gonna happen since I'm paying the coaches fee. However, since he though she should be doing more, he demanded that she swim certain events at the state club meet that she wasn't training for and meet his standards/times if she was to be left in her current training group and not moved down to slower groups. Essentially being punished for not doing 9 or 10 practices a week at about 10k yards/session. I readily accepted that challenge.
We're lucky to have a good coach that accepts some good athletes are simply not interested in training for the Olympics and want to do other sports too.
Yep, did the club swimming scene with my own kid. I get it. We controlled the level of participation in both practice and meets much to the chagrin of the coach who thought everyone should be doing what the Olympic Trials qualifiers should be doing. Not gonna happen since I'm paying the coaches fee. However, since he though she should be doing more, he demanded that she swim certain events at the state club meet that she wasn't training for and meet his standards/times if she was to be left in her current training group and not moved down to slower groups. Essentially being punished for not doing 9 or 10 practices a week at about 10k yards/session. I readily accepted that challenge.
My daughter did not experience burnout, tiger parents or broken shoulders because of our restraint. She also got straight A's in school, had a great group of friends that weren't as catty as the club swim kids and had time to be a kid in general. Needless to say, she smashed every one of his standards and was quickly replacing relay members during the meet after she completed her assignment. She swam 12 races in 3 days and won 2 state titles.
The coach was a 92 Olympian and swam in Barcelona. He had no clue as to how to bring young people along that weren't already great but sure liked to tell everyone how great he was. My kid and others, through common sense and hard work were his greatest successes and he didn't have the ability to recognize it.
i was pretty slow, but I still run to this day. Wonder if the costs saved from never using the healthcare system outweighs the cost of a bus seat for my county
Absolutely not. However, the 32 min 5 k gets ridiculous. I really believe that they should have some of the slower Runners stop at either 1 mile or 2 miles and have a time limit for that. It's absurd to wait 15-30 minutes to start the next race on some occasions.
No...if anything a community where 75+ kids come out for one gender should just get more volunteers. You are in an area with runners. Probably lots of joggers willing to help.
HS sports should be more accessible; if anything I've thought large schools should have more teams in a sport. Have a varsity program and a JV program and four third-string class year specific programs for athletes not on track to be varsity in every sport where you have the interest (avoid cuts wherever possible). HS sports should be educational (healthful, and team oriented and fun).
That still leaves room to be competitive, for top athletes. There is also nothing wrong with a 7 man roster for Qualifying rounds and State.
I have never turned kids away, but I understand the poster you are responding to who said how difficult it is to handle 75 per with two coaches. We have around 30 girls and it is me and a shared assistant coach with the boys team and it can be difficult at times. Our numbers fluctuate year to year, so we have had up to 50.
Volunteers have to be trusted and certified in multiple areas to be alone with underage athletes. This is a must even if the school system does not require it. This was easier 10 years ago when education majors were boosting their resume. Now teaching jobs in our area are fairly easy to obtain so there is less of an opportunity to attract this group. It's also a hard sell to find volunteers willing to go through the certification process with their own money.
On a typical day with a larger team, you will have many health and wellness issues that need to be addressed in addition to the training that you are having them do which is all different depending on who they are. I rely a lot on my senior leadership day to day to help.
The slower kids are a mixed bag. Speed is not important to me, but effort is. On two occasions over the years, I had a captain that happened to be the slowest member of the team. In both cases they were my best leaders. Had I made cuts based on speed they would not have been part of the program. I have not faced making cuts and really don't want to but there is a tipping point where the school system would have to agree to provide more help. I honestly think 70+ would be too much for us.
A higher percentage of the slower kids on your team will be the kids trying to get out of training, races, volunteer efforts. I'm not saying this is true of all of them, I am saying a higher percentage of them are like this. The girls that are breaking 20 are not out cutting the workout short or hiding on a training run. The classic is the group that is walking and as soon as they see you, they all start running again. The top three training groups we have are not doing that. I have not noticed this being a problem for the rest of the team, but it requires a lot of energy on my part to keep them going and why actually a slow member of the team putting in a huge effort is extremely valuable as an example to the others around her.
The other piece not often mentioned is the slower kids are often friends with the faster kids. In particular it is very important for us to have good attendance over the summer for practices when they are not required. Without the slower kids attending the practices the faster kids will generally not show up either.
I am glad I have not faced this yet because I would want to make the cuts based on effort which would mean a lot of parent meetings with the athletic director if I did it that way.
No. Because you want taxpayers of one school district to fund the activity of a crappy athlete. It is way more than one bus ride. An extra bus costs hundreds for each meet. More uniforms are required. More coaches are required.
I went to a small high school with a large cross country team. There was no shortage of uniforms, and the runners returned them at the end of the season. The team was limited to 1 bus, and the only year where there were cuts had more sign-ups than a single bus could hold.
For long distance travel to regional and championship meetings, the top 9 runners (top 7 with 2 alternates) travelled by van. Parents arranged carpools for JV athletes who wanted to travel to the meet to cheer on their teammates.
Troll thread is troll thread. But even so, being an adolescent is a very hard time for virtually all young people. Being a part of a team with other like minded young people pursuing a healthy pastime that provides a whole host of benefits can be a pivotal experience for the kids. What a cruel joke to float a troll thread out there playing at taking that opportunity away from young people. The relatively low expense of maximizing how many kids can participate versus the high value of the benefits they get from the experience makes it well worth the cost.
Def troll. But we buried the lead. How do slow runners cost anything? Our Public schools charge the parents for XC. We buy singlets, pay for food, pay 300$ up front. Only thing they cover is bus and entry, which i assume is what the 300 is for.
Re "cost," first off, I think you're trafficking in a false premise. My experience you only saw the equipment room if you were running at the meet tomorrow. They weren't handing out unis and shoes to the guys not making TF meets. In my state we were usually limited to running 7 per team x 3 teams. So it doesn't matter if this dude's 75 show up, 21 can make the meets here. 7 varsity, 7 JV, 7 frosh.
Second, we trained on/around campus. I think the only item we got for showing up was a mesh laundry bag. Then like I said we were lucky to get a decent % of the 21 available slots per school per meet, full varsity partial JV and frosh. If JV or Frosh Slowpoke showed up, oh my, the rest of the JV might have an actual team score and rank this week. We might use another uni and shoes TF was going to need anyway.
The horror!
Last, I get one leading reason for sports teams is athletic competition. At least in my state even with a pretty good team your last guy or two may be 18 min type guys. And you might have underclass kids running low 20s who are the future 18 min guys. But what I find grotesque is that another set of reasons for school sports are activity and health. Get kids off the couch and out there playing and getting at least somewhat in shape. It would be particularly absurd if this same person saying don't use my taxes for JV Slowpoke also doesn't want to pay their medical bills later on when they are pointed back to the couch. Aren't y'all the "get of your tookus and quit asking for a handout" folks? So the chunky JV kid shows up and you want to send him back home? Sounds vaguely eugenics for folks who generally sell, why don't you get active.
I also find giggle inducing that it's XC that has the losers. Go watch a sophomore football team. Are we suggesting every lardbottom OL kid is a superior specimen? Short me could have made our sophomore hoops team if I'd wanted. Some of the JV soccer teams that we'd beat 9-0.
I generally agree with the poster who was like it's self-selecting. You have to want to run miles a week and 2-3 mile races every weekend. Your theoretical scrub would have to be willing to do "mascot" finishes all alone back of the pack every week. Very few people will do that over and over.
I think this is mostly pretend. When I ran last runner finishing district (total 130 boys from 8 schools across 3 levels) would be like 14 mins frosh 2 mi; 22 mins varsity; and there would be one outlier kid doing 28 mins on JV with every other finisher under 24. there is not any/much real fat to cut.
The OP notably didn't say where his cut line would be, it struck me as a vaguely selfish or proto-Nazi thing of hand the budget to me to send me to Foot Locker at the expense of the back-pack kids. I get maybe some tiny % of schools have dozens of kids but most have like 20 a gender which isn't even a football offense+defense of starters.
I am pretty sure the point here is send me to Foot Locker and make fun of vaguely "slower" other people because XC is about as cheap a sport to fund as I can imagine. Here is a shirt and shorts. Here are some spikes. I understand the rare ones saying I need a cut for logistics but generally speaking it's a cheap sport with self-limited participation. You need more bodies not fewer. Football is the one where everyone involved needs a helmet, pads, cleats, etc. Multiple position coaches. All manner of AV equipment. Multiple buses. Plenty of klutzy chunky kids who maybe play a game all season. And you're gonna begrudge XC one more kid?
XC usually ends up fairly self-selecting at our HS. Very few "slow" runners continue on to JR or SR year, but they gave it a go. I just wish more of the other sports mediocre participants, who are decent runners, would give running a real try. Often times they would/or do have a better experience and get more recognition for their efforts.
Definitely--we had a few on our team cross over from other sports such as soccer/football/basketball and they played an important role in our team depth. It also seemed that in the late 80's in high school a lot of us played multiple sports compared to specialization today. our coach encouraged people of all abilities and did not have cuts, but yeah the slower runners ended up doing only a season or two, but at least he let them have a kick at the can and come out to practice and race the early meets...
I agree with the OP. There should be standards and you have to meet the standards to be a part of the team.
However, I think that it should be go a little further. This is school that we're talking about so there should be a cutoff for the "dumb" kids. After all, we don't want them wasting the valuable resources of the team. So, unless the kid can make a B average (after a yearly summer "entrance" exam,) he is not allowed to attend the school, period. Keep school for the smart kids and cross country for the fast kids. Dumb and slow kids can stay home... and do whatever dumb slow kids do. Kudos to OP for having a refreshing attitude. Godspeed OP.
At least in the HS district I was in the top 14 got to race in either varsity or JV depending on the coach's determination. The no. of available uniforms/budget was based on that number. A part of the proceeds from higher profile sports that made money ie. football, basketball helped pay for the other sports. These days I see schools providing 5k runs for the public to help cover XC costs. So slower kids should still be part of a team, just not racing until their abilities meet requirements to race.
It costs transportation and money to fund people in XC should the money be spend more on faster individuals
Really... that extra seat on that bus or that van cant bring along an additional kid to the meets? Do/can those kids bring a difference advantage to the team other than fast times?
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