If you're a teacher you are paid to help every student. As a coach same thing applies. Helping everyone reach their own potential.
Not really. HS Coaches are expected to field a good team just like any other sport. Just because XC is a no cut sport doesn't mean the coach has to spend inordinate amounts of time on kids that are intransigent, pains in the azz, only there for a check box on college apps, etc. We don't cut for talent but we do for truly not trying or disruptiveness. As long as you mostly show up and make an even a marginal effort, that is fine and you will improve just by doing that. The best thing 30min 5k runners can do is show up and run 30-60min a day. Timing them in 8x800 is pointless until they crack 25.
The basketball team can cut and those coaches have no obligation to those kids. I can't cut but that does not mean I should sacrifice team success so some might run 26 instead of 27.
I don't know if the OP is a troll but if not the down votes are totally unwarranted.
Different workouts for different levels of fitness and experience is much different than ignoring a runner because she isn't fast, may not have any friends (what does that have to do with XC?), is terrible at her warmups (is it because she is refusing? Uncoordinated?), is allegedly lazy, and whatever other things this coach said. This coach hasn't provided convincing information that tells me this runner is actually lazy or uncoachable. And, there other workouts a novice or slower runner can be prescribed that doesn't require timing or extra care - a fartlek, tempo, strides. All fundamental workouts that would improve a runners endurance and speed without much extra time on the coaches part. Oh, and kind words of encouragement go a long way too.
If you're a teacher you are paid to help every student. As a coach same thing applies. Helping everyone reach their own potential.
Not really. HS Coaches are expected to field a good team just like any other sport. Just because XC is a no cut sport doesn't mean the coach has to spend inordinate amounts of time on kids that are intransigent, pains in the azz, only there for a check box on college apps, etc. We don't cut for talent but we do for truly not trying or disruptiveness. As long as you mostly show up and make an even a marginal effort, that is fine and you will improve just by doing that. The best thing 30min 5k runners can do is show up and run 30-60min a day. Timing them in 8x800 is pointless until they crack 25.
The basketball team can cut and those coaches have no obligation to those kids. I can't cut but that does not mean I should sacrifice team success so some might run 26 instead of 27.
I don't know if the OP is a troll but if not the down votes are totally unwarranted.
Thank you. Part of being a good coach is knowing where to spend your resources, including your time and effort. You can’t treat every kid the same.
it's a fake news argument to say he shouldn't spend "inordinate" time when he said he basically ignored her -- "left alone." exact opposite of what he said. the premise of the post is he ignored an athlete who then ran 3 minutes faster and either he feels guilty or she has bettered herself enough for him to see the selfish value in being a coach to her. nothing about the premise is like he made her focal.
XC to me a lot of the day is just running through the paces of the workout and there is a lot of standing around time. and in my experience beyond having a split or time called out you might talk man to man once or twice a week. chunk of it is just playing fan and saying well done or come on lil faster than that. you're spending 10-20 hours a week with these people every week for 3 months. a coach should be able to chat personally with 20, 30 people periodically.
conversely there is only so much time you could spend on your star runner before they might feel annoyed and too much attention.
that plus the nature of XC is folks coming in staggered. you maybe say something to the star while you wait on the pack and the weaker ones. the stagger itself provides the time to spread out the motivation, advice, etc.
to me this attitude is somewhere in between "roll out the ball" -- just take credit for the stars -- and myopically focusing on individual results as opposed to playing the team game where you have to invest in everyone because who knows who is your 5th or 7th person their senior year.
"resources?" this is XC not the three ring circus of TF. not like you are over at the pole vault pit spotting people while the team runs. it's usually a team running repeats or fartleks all together in one area. plenty of breaks. athletes finishing at different times. bus trips. sitting around waiting 2 hours for the meet to start or for the boys to run their race after the girls.
i personally find this attitude arrogant and self serving. guy who couldn't consistently make our 3 man roster distances in junior high bypassed all the stars in HS and was top 10 in XC locally, went small D1. these are kids. your job is to make everyone better and watch and see what happens.
the OP was probably a troll post, logically, bears reminding his narrative is the girl beat 2-3 of his other runners that he's calling slow. he either doesn't realize his own narrative makes her relevant again or if it's real he hasn't updated his mentality to reality which is she's no longer his worst runner to dunk on. probably a sign of the coaching quality his non-investment is catching 2-3 of his other runners who it sounds like aren't improving and would also be running 26s or worse.
my state has switched from 2 mi to 5k over the past few decades so i lost my sense of comparison, and i am sure good teams are in the high teens and low 20s, but there were several varsity girls in my fairly competitive district who ran >26, as well as 5 girls at the regional level which you have to advance out of a district to do. i also saw about 10 women at the opening meet for my old D3 team who finished >26 at 5k in the season opener, including a couple D1 girls.
maybe you're glory hunting so hard you don't know what truly slow is at the level.
I continue to be confused by how offended some people are by my posts and the OPs. Hey, I’ve wasted plenty of time and effort trying to help kids get better who just didn’t care that much one way of the other. That doesn’t make them bad people. Not everyone wants to commit themselves to excellence in a particular sport, as they have different priorities. But I’m not going to keep encouraging an athlete to do more, work harder, attend more practices, or focus on technique, when that simply isn’t one of their life goals. Like most of the coaches here, I work in a sport in which it is unusual to cut anyone at the junior level. I work with the athletes I’ve got.
I recently left a coaching job because the program had few athletes who were committed to reaching their potential. It was a great group of kids team with a good family atmosphere. But it was more or less an after school program with a sport attached. I enjoy those kids and their families a lot. But after a few years, I realized my goals and theirs were incompatible. Any truly elite athlete would have been quietly redirected to another program. The kids deserved a coach that suited their goals. I left on excellent terms, and found another program with a sizable elite cadre, which I find more rewarding.
Anyone who finds that offensive…keep doing what you’re doing I guess.
it's not complicated. basic reality and logic. i have *one* supposedly "slow" runner. she then outruns *two or three* other runners on the same team. the others aren't dissed as "slow." he doesn't ponder withholding their coaching. even though they just lost to miss "slow." which by logic makes them also..............he either isn't consistent or isn't admitting he really has *several* "slow" runners. he doesn't ponder whether something is wrong with either his personality/work ethic evaluation or his coaching work if a supposed malcontent can show up his other runners. or if this deep in a season he has this many people this supposedly "slow."
he then cannot seem to decide if he is trying to do better or seeking absolution to continue being lazy or a jerk. to me he's either a troll making it all up or incompetent or strange. most normal people would not respond to a 3 FREAKING MINUTE PR where she upsets his pecking order by going on the internet asking for excuses to keep doing nothing. they'd give the improver an attaboy and say now let's go for 25 mins.
one time i made the highest grade in my physics 2 class where i generally was a mediocre B student, in a room of kids going to places like MIT and such. i got called up to the teacher's desk. it was, "what just happened." oh, this time i studied with the guy down the street. "do that some more."
no one's offended. it's weird. calling us offended is kind of passive aggressive censorship stuff.
and to elaborate on the physics 2 story. if the kid down the street tutors me and i make the best grade in the class, better than kids going to MIT, but when teacher teaches me i make Bs, hmmm, maybe it's how you're teaching me. maybe you're wasting my potential. and maybe it's also me. but if your response is like, yeah, that high grade is a fluke, i don't need to look at what i am doing......strange. not seeking to change. he's seeking absolution to not do his job. IMO.
I continue to be confused by how offended some people are by my posts and the OPs. Hey, I’ve wasted plenty of time and effort trying to help kids get better who just didn’t care that much one way of the other. That doesn’t make them bad people. Not everyone wants to commit themselves to excellence in a particular sport, as they have different priorities. But I’m not going to keep encouraging an athlete to do more, work harder, attend more practices, or focus on technique, when that simply isn’t one of their life goals. Like most of the coaches here, I work in a sport in which it is unusual to cut anyone at the junior level. I work with the athletes I’ve got.
I recently left a coaching job because the program had few athletes who were committed to reaching their potential. It was a great group of kids team with a good family atmosphere. But it was more or less an after school program with a sport attached. I enjoy those kids and their families a lot. But after a few years, I realized my goals and theirs were incompatible. Any truly elite athlete would have been quietly redirected to another program. The kids deserved a coach that suited their goals. I left on excellent terms, and found another program with a sizable elite cadre, which I find more rewarding.
Anyone who finds that offensive…keep doing what you’re doing I guess.
I’m just enjoying reading my post again. Outstanding reasoning right there.