My son is getting no interest from his preferred college

I am a D1 coach. I have seen this complaint on here about multiple HS 4:55 females who are getting no interest from anyone and I simply do not believe it.

The school I coach at is very solid academically. Our distance program is decent but we are not a 'name' program. Not one 4:55 has contacted me this year and if one did I would certainly follow up and offer some financial help... I could name several west coast programs who would be very interested in a 4:55 HS miler. They certainly would not have a full for someone who has run 4:55 but we'd all have something.

I find it very hard to believe a 4:55 female is being forced to walk-on somewhere because she has no other options. (one caveat to that is if she ran 4:55 as a frosh and is now no longer that fast.)

Dear dad,

You are leaving out a TON of information.

What events does your sone compete in? What year is your son? What are his grades?

You need to be proactive and pick up the phone. Never wait for top schools to be the ones reaching out to your son. For most of us it doesn't work that way. They may not even know about him. And at this point you haven't told us any of your son's times, so I would say they're probably not as competitive as you are stating. If a schools' roster is full of good mid-D underclassmen that may be a clue as to why they aren't reaching out as well.

And as someone already pointed out you should NEVER "put all your eggs in one basket" especially if they didn't show interest or follow up.

Funny how the coaches never name their program even though they would be bombarded with faster runners. And most of the posters seem to think kids are looking for scholarships. Most just want a roster spot but they aren't getting responses. The few times that people have thrown out names of schools here, I have had guys contact them and receive no response.

If he is that academically inclined please please please don't go to a NAIA or D2 school just to get an opportunity to run.

They are not good academic opportunities. He will regret it forever.

Go to the best academic school you can and if you can run there, awesome.

Sometimes the best school costs $320k while the average school costs almost nothing.

I am a DI coach as well. I don't believe he hasn't been contacted as well. Something seems fishy. If this athlete were in the top 20 just in the state, not nationally, they have been contacted. So either the athlete/father is only wanting to hear from this one specific school and they are not getting any bites, not paying any attention to the other programs who have reached out, or the results they claim to have are just not there.

My program gets contacted by parents often, that claim their son/daughter runs x, y, z and say they think they would be great for our team. But when we look at their milesplit, it's not anywhere near times we are looking at.

OR the father has already answered his own question. His son runs mid distance but is hoping to hear from a distance program. They are not wanting/needing his son.

OR college recruits have talked to his coach and the coach is giving a different story. That they wouldn't want him on their college roster.

Sounds like we all are interested in knowing who this athlete is so that we could know his times. If we knew, and he is as good as he says he is, he would have a few visits lined up by next week.

I believe it. I don't know what coaches are doing these days.

Many of you just restate the talking points. Be proactive. Reach out. Broaden your search. Blah blah. Coaches, athletes, and parents have repeatedly stated that coaches are not responding to kids who are faster than 90% of the current roster. Coaches got lazy through Covid realizing that they get paid for working or not working.

A lot of programs are cutting down on their roster spots, partly for financial reasons, but also for Title IX, because more women are going to college than men.

So the program may have already filled their roster spots. Maybe there is a shortage of roster spots in all of DI right now.

COnfused dad.

2) As someone else stated, give us the event and the times.

3) You said mid-d. Many coaches have little interest in the 800. Why? They aren't versatile. Their endurance isn't good enough to help in xc and in track they normally do 1 event - the 800. A top sprinter can do 2-5 events and score way more points - 100, 200 4 x 100 4 x 400. Hell throw in the lj as well. A long distance runner does the 5k/10k and xc.

And when I say many coaches, I'm talking about top programs like Villanova. When I was coaching at Cornell, a guy who was like the #2 or #3 800 recruit in north america was interested in Cornell. I think he'd run like 150 or 151 at the time. We couldn't get him in but I told him I'd make a few calls for him. I talked to Marcus O'Sullivan and he said, "Is he good at xc? If not, I don't think I'll have enough money for him."

4) Coaches are generall going to a) Go after the very best guys. It's a bell curve. Just like having the #1 pick in the NBA draft is WAY WAY WAY more important than #25, it's true in recruiting or b) Go after the guys they historically get - in-state, etc. or c) Go after people who express interest in them.

Coaches have lives. Conctacing every recruit is time consuming. If you are in Nebrasaka, you are unlucky to contact the #25 guy in California as you don't think he'll come.

But seriously, email me or call me 844 - 538-7786 ext 3 and I'll tell you what I think.

Covid-19 did kill things for the HSers. All of the super seniors has killed demand for HSers as I predicted. A gap year might be the right call.

Every coach I know, at all levels, recruits hard.

I reach out to every athlete in the top 20 of my state and surrounding states. Every athlete I talk to has talked to other schools. So something seems off by what this poster is telling us. There is more to the story.

Rejections would be welcomed. 90% just don't respond. We follow up but then move on after the 2nd try.

I heard on some coaching podcast that the recruiting landscape has shifted from the recruit wanting to contribute to the team, what can they give to the team, to what will the team give to the athlete. They want special treatment.

So yeah, a runner who will contribute to xc, and multiple events in track will get way more attention than a one event specialist. Parents/athletes need to understand that it's a business.

100% agree on this. We joke it's just like dating. If you text someone to call/meet and they don't respond after the second attempt, move on.

I can't believe this thread has gone on so long without any info on this supposed kid's race times! I guess the OP realizes that everyone is happy to speculate and offer uninformed opinions these days. Give us the facts!

Stanford looks internationally, low 8:50s will get you recruited. I know an 8:49 guy who finally got to fill out the recruiting questionaire there. It's ridiculous.