Should HS Track Be a No-Cut Sport ?

Boston29 wrote:

I think the coach's approach and reasoning with the sprinter group is logical given the school size. Otherwise, track and field should be no-cut.

I have more of a problem with kids who run 14-15 min 3200's thus dragging on a meet. Work their tale of in practice, put them in the 800 or 1600 and give the rest of us a chance to go home (particularly a mid-week meet).

So what is your acceptible cut off for the 300m in a dual meet? Even if you say 11:00, you're whining about some kid costing you 3 or 4 minutes. Big deal. That's not what drags a meet on. What drags meets on is a slow starter, long delays getting times and places correct, and running more heats or sections than necessary. If your schedule demands the extra 2 minutes that the 3200m slow kid is costing you, you need to reevaluate your life.

upstate assistant wrote:

And for those who have 100 athletes on the team, I really doubt you're giving each and every athlete your full attention.

Who are YOU to question what kind of attention a coach is giving to others? Have we become a society so dependent on the efforts of others that kids aren't given opportunities to figure a few things out for themselves?

I've known coaches who can work with a group of 100 kids and have each kid feel like THEY were the focus of that coach's workout. All coaches aren't created equal.

First, I want to just say that everybody is jumping on WE CUT right now without reading what he wrote - he said he doesn't cut distance. All this anecdotal evidence is based on distance runners. Now I know there will be anecdotal evidence for other events, but I just wanted to clear that up since EVERYBODY is jumping on his throat for this. He clearly is saying that he is cutting NON-MOTIVATED (usually juniors and seniors) from the team - not first time runners who have a bad first race EVER.

To those saying their freshman year first race was 5:30 (for a guy) and 6:43 (for a girl) are very respectable times for distance runners, especially 13-14 year olds running for their first time. But a 5:30 mile from a freshman guy does not equal a sub-13 foot long jump. Let's be realistic here, he isn't cutting people that really want to be there and are working their asses off - he has stated it is people that are there for alternative reasons.

For the record, I went to a high school with 3,000 students and a cross country team of close to 100 guys and 100 girls. And we did have cuts (to get it down to those 90-100 numbers). But they had all summer to train with the team, show dedication and the desire to be there, and with ANY sort of work ethic they will make the cut. If they don't, but they have shown a solid determination, then they can stick around and not travel, but keep with the team all season to keep trying to make the cut. Same process with ALL events in track. The marks aren't ridiculous, for the mile (for guys it is 6 mins) for the long jump it is like 13ft (guys). I mean, it isn't impossible for anybody to make it, and it certainly isn't in place to weed out the "not talented". It is more to weed out those who really don't give a rats ass and would rather be somewhere else. And even those kids are afforded many opportunities and second chances. But there are facility and supervision issues when the numbers get large. And if you can't take care of everybody, you want to take care of those who want to be there and want to be taken care of.

This is a subject that hits home for me. I ran at a very strong high school. The team did not cut. Instead it gave the incentive that if you could not break 20:00 for 3 miles as a freshmen you didn't travel and would earn a C in the class (since you earn PE credits for cross country). For non-Freshman the mark was lowered down to 19 minutes, and to go on the training camp you needed to be top 25 on the team (which took about 17:30 or so).

Anyways as a Freshmen I ran 20:01 at the big time trial. If there was just a cut I doubt I would be running today. But now, because of the grace of my coach I have achieved a lot in the sport and even earned All American honors in the NAIA.

So bottom line, don't cut for poor performance at the high school level, because you don't know who you are cutting, and you don't know how the experience of running could affect them in life.

-the rocket

Where are yougetting this idea that high school football teams cut? I've never known of any and I sort of grew up around the sport. My dad was a high school coach for a while.

Yes, obviously a sport like basketball where you can only have five players needs to cut if you get large numbers of kids coming out just like you need to limit the number of atheletes who can enter a district championship meet. But a track meet has something like 16-18 events so you could accomodate 100 kids. It would be something like 5-7 kids per event. And it's ok to improve slowly in any sport when you're dealing with amateurs.

I have a similar story...my first 5k in xc was a blazing 28:53. I got down to 15:48 for the 5k XC (winning my conference meet and placing 9th at the state meet) and ran 9:33 and 4:27. In college I've gone on to run 25:02 for the 8k XC to place 39th at DIII Nationals, as well as 4:21 in the mile, 8:32 in the 3k, and 14:50 in the 5k, all in my sophomore year. While I don't think any coach should waste his/her time on somebody who pretends to go for a run and actually goes to get pizza (happened on our team) but I don't think cuts based on fitness early in the season would benefit anybody. That's what college is for. I know for a fact that I would not have run XC in high school had our team had cuts. I would have either been cut or have been too intimidated to try out.

Another reason that track is different is that the really awful performer isn't going to hurt his team. If you have a second baseman who can't catch a ball, throw the ball to first or do anything but strike out or walk your team in in trouble whenever that player is involved in the action. A kid running a 3:00 half mile isn't going help you but if you have someone who's a minute faster you'll still score points in the event.

HRE wrote:

Another reason that track is different is that the really awful performer isn't going to hurt his team. If you have a second baseman who can't catch a ball, throw the ball to first or do anything but strike out or walk your team in in trouble whenever that player is involved in the action. A kid running a 3:00 half mile isn't going help you but if you have someone who's a minute faster you'll still score points in the event.

Sometimes these kids help in ways you don't foresee. This is about XC, but once we had a kid who dropped from 30 min to 24:30 in one race. Our varsity went on to win a tie breaker for the conference championship, and one kid in particular ran way above his potential. When I asked him where that race came from, the first thing he told me was that "When I saw that _____ dropped over 5 minutes off of his time, I knew that our team was going to have a great day".

You can't plan for things like this to happen. But they'll never happen if you only think the talented kids are worth your time.

WE CUT wrote:

We had over 180+ sign up for just boys track this year, and over 100 girls sign up. The fact is we are limited on our space, and in the number of coaches on our staff to monitor that many kids.

I've enjoyed the discussion in this thread, and feel that some good points have been made (though the name-calling really doesn't help).

As is so often the case, "I feel strongly both ways." As usual, I think that different things work for different people--and for different teams, athletic departments, schools, and communities.

The small piece I quoted above makes, I feel, a completely valid point. Some programs *are* limited in their facilities and their staffs. It does no good to say "get more assistants" if you don't have the money to pay them, or if the available volunteers would be more likely to hurt your program, rather than help it.

Moreover, if available space is limited you have to be extremely careful about avoiding accidents. And the same is certainly true if one or two people are supposed to "ride herd" on a couple of hundred kids. If an accident should occur, there's real potential for a negligence judgment that could impoverish not just the coach(es) but also the school, the district, and the community.

On the other hand...

IF the funding and facilities allow, I could see having a no-cut policy. Somebody mentioned Joe Newton's xc teams, which carry 100+ boys every year, including a lot of slow ones. However, Joe has, and enforces rigidly, rules requiring all the kids to come to practice every single day. He also has a number of conduct rules, etc., and does not hesitate to enforce them against his very best kids. (And that "enforcement," generally speaking, means cutting the kid from the team.)

So perhaps something like this would help keep numbers manageable for some programs: follow the team's policies, or be gone; conversely, if you *do* make the commitment (in time, effort, and organization) to follow the team's rules, you're welcome to stay. This way, you at least avoid the "dabblers" who'll drain coaching time and attention away from the serious kids. The problem, of course, is that you have to have the confidence in yourself and your program to be willing to cut your very best kid at the very worst time, if s/he breaks the rules...

I never see these kids being into it. Rather they seem like they hate what they are doing. I know one coach that has entered these kids in the distances to weed them out. They aren't in shape to compete at this distance, so why not end their torture (and ours). If this same kid can run an 800 and feel like he has competed and is improving, I think he is more motivated to work hard the next day. That is the seed to their ultimate long term success and understanding how to improve.

Lasty, to your point about my need for self-reflection, well we are both on a blog. I realize the narrowness of that lifestyle. However, only one of us is doing a personal insult.

good post.

Ray wrote:

But to see that kid work his ass off, maybe get down to 2:39 by the next year and then ask you if you thought running cross would make him even better.....priceless! Every bit as rewarding as the 2:19 kid getting down to 2:06.

Neither of those are rewarding. You could say the same thing about a shitty football player working his ass off and becoming mediocre.

Really? Wut's ur name?

Definitely no cut.

Regardless of if anyone ever makes anything out of themselves. At least let the little fellers get involved and enjoy the sport. Heck maybe one day they will not change the channel when track is on TV. It will also give people more of an appreciation when they see the fast times.

I ran 5:52 mile sophomore year in high school, I think ~12:50 3200.

Senior year I was 2:01, 4:41, heck i walked on to a college team and was thrilled they didn't cut me.

Thankfully they didn't and I got down to ~48point, 1:53 and 2:29 <-- 100m not marathon.

Thank god arrogant pricks didn't shoo me away cause I sucked. I would have never found one of my passions in life if I was cut as a youngster.

Really? Wut is ur name?

Boston29 wrote:

Lasty, to your point about my need for self-reflection, well we are both on a blog. I realize the narrowness of that lifestyle. However, only one of us is doing a personal insult.

My post wasn't an insult. I honestly meant that you need to reevaluate your priorities if a slow kid costing 2 extra minutes at meet is causeing a problem for you. If that's the event they are best at, they should run it. Don't stick them in something else just as a time saver.

To all others, a high school coach should be involved in the sport purely to help all their athletes improve, regardless of their beginning ability level. That being said, the only time that I see a cut as being necessary is when you have a team so large in numbers that it makes it impossible for the coaching staff to really tend to all of the athletes and ensure that they can get the proper coaching.

Figure it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLuoCyU8lPA&feature=related

That's cross country. Track is much harder to coach when you've got hundreds of kids running around. There are these pesky things called field events that require actual technique instruction.

I have bit read the entire thread, but it was a no-cut sport at my school and I assumed it was just about everywhere. The way things are now, I'd think some schools would have a tough time filling spots for all of the events. I can't imagine any argument in favor of making cuts.