Recruiting for junior girl, preferably southeast or mountain west

Colorado College is a very good liberal arts school (D3) but is very expensive. They have a good program

Some truth and some not so much. Few coaches are highly competent. Most were not STEM majors with 36 ACT scores. Most liked to run and had a soft major. They volunteered for a year and lived in their car. So the most accurate thing you said is that mistakes are made. But it isn't really a mistake. It is that coaches realize that they earn their pay whether they watch TV or they answer emails and make phone calls. You were incorrect to day that a 5 minute miler wouldn't be 3rd on a team right now if there are only 2 sub 5 milers. That is just a fact. They didn't say they would be 3rd next year if they get slower. Most people don't just check TFRRS, they check the high school times of the team.

I agree. Used to live there. Unfortunately I resent the school. They have something called the Colorado Pledge that, while it guarantees anything from zero cost to no more than the flagship school for certain tiers of income, above the highest level, which isn’t very high, your kid gets nothing. I can see doing that with out of state kids, but for taxpaying Coloradoans? Also a notoriously liberal school, following the trend of the state.

I talked to both their admissions and financial aid offices. They clearly don’t want to keep their best and brightest CO kids in CO, because my oldest wouldn’t even look at it after that. And she really liked the block system. Some kids don’t. Also, I don’t think it’s as good as it’s rated.

Anyhow, my youngest wouldn’t get in there. She’s looking more for like a state school with reciprocity or a coach who is willing to take a chance. Schools that finished near the bottom of the pack at some of the regional meets. Let’s pretend a kid is a 5:00, 10:30, 17:00 kid senior year. Hard for me to believe that a non-elite college program wouldn’t see upside there as long as the girl wasn’t running 60-70+ mpw in high school.

It os clear from the posts of multiple people that coaches are not reading their email. My own kids tell me that they have thousands of unread messages which males it seem like it is a trend. Guessing only phone calls that are answered are the ticket.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned an obvious fact here, as I have been a college coach in my younger days: form. How does your daughter run? Is she fluid or strained at 5:10/mile? What is her potential? I never recruited a runner I felt was fighting his/her body and/or I did not feel confident I could improve. There are some kids that are run into the ground in high school just forcing every run and they can run very fast, however, those are the kids that stagnate or don't even finish four years of college on a team. If she is dynamic, fluid, great speed, can close, has a capacity for high workload without breaking down, then she is more than a 5:0x Miler... however, if she looks like an old athlete broken down running 5:0x, many coaches will pass... good news is that Milesplit has done a great job connecting videos with profiles so a coach can see for themselves who they are recruiting without physically recruiting.

Ok. Coach coach...

Not sure what I said that was incorrect because I wasn't commenting on the competency of coaches, just trying to give insight to the recruiting process.

Seems like you got upset about my comment that it's hard to know who will or won't be successful at the college level. I know I can't predict the future and I know most other coaches can't either. (btw, a college coach is only concerned with how someone will run in college not where the recruit is in HS.)

But I digress, I didn't come here to argue. I was just trying to help the parents and coaches who were asking about recruiting.

Nobody mentioned it because it isn't relevant to the concerns. Yes the point is valid if a coach is considering a kid but the real topic has sort of evolved into coaches not responding to anyone. They aren't looking at the kid because they don't even know they exist. If a 5 minute miler from Kentucky sends an email to the Clemson coach and receives no response, it is clear that the coach didn't look at her form or her email.

This is true. The best offer my daughter got the reason the coach cited for the offer was a milesplit video from the state meet 1600m where apparently she looked "good, smooth and most importantly determined". This video was during a loss so its not a race she even liked to think about.

My son sent out many emails and filled out questionnaires but it wasn’t until he sent some to smaller local schools that he heard back from anyone. He’s more of a track guy but most coaches in New England are familiar with a course he ran multiple times. I think that helped.

Good luck

Found this thread. My daughter ran about the same times as some of the other posters. She is very smart but our income and savings made the elite academic schools unattractive. She received interest from a few mid majors but the cost is relatively high there also. She has been really disappointed with the lack of responses from Power 5 schools, even our instate one.

Yes, coaches have become very lazy thinking they earn the same regardless if working or not so they just sit back and let kids come to them. It seems take phone calls to the coach and having them randomly answer is the only way to get things going. I have had several girls receive no response to emails from dozens of teams that have only 1-2 women under 5 minutes or 10 minutes for 3000 while these girls are at those times at 17 years old.

Your answer is in the second to last sentence. If an athlete is willing to quit the sport without a scholarship then they’ll never make it. Runnjng I’m college is a job.

You sort of missed the point that she is just looking for a roster spot, not money anywhere.

The girls on my team have been going through similar situations. Coaches are not responding to emails. Most don't answer their phones. It doesn't seem to matter if a girl is top 5 or would be best on their team. One answered her phone and gave the girl a visit but said she hadn't seen an email or questionnaire.

A couple of good Division 2 schools to consider in the south would be Lee University in Tennessee and University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Both schools have had good success on the D2 level, I can't speak to the academics of Lee, but I know Huntsville, Alabama is a good engineering and nursing school.

Are you familiar with the coaches to know that they will respond.

Colorado College is a national small liberal arts college competing with Williams, Amherst to Oberlin, Hamilton etc.

1 - financial aid from 'zero cost' to 'your kid gets nothing' is the standard need based policy at all these schools, the Ivies too. No athletic aid, very little merit aid.

2 - it's a private college, so there is no state funding and no obligation to help Colorado taxpayers.

3 - you are actually at a disadvantage applying from Colorado, as the school is trying to build their national/international footprint. They want to claim students from x of 50 states and y countries. If you apply from an exotic country, or an odd state like Rhode Island or Wyoming you have a better chance. So you are absolutely right they don't want the best and brightest in Colorado, rather they want to bring the best and brightest to CO. (similarly Mass is worst state to apply from, to Harvard, MIT, Williams n Amherst)

4 - athletics - while there is no aid, being supported by a coach will allow a drop in admission standards, so the athlete has a better chance/guarantee of acceptance than the general pool. (this was the core of the varsity blues admission scandal).

I think they would, I don't know either really well. But from my limited experience they are both stand up guys!

Thanks for Chiming in. Lee is on our radar. But, at the end of the day, we are looking for the equivalent of in state tuition. I’m sure most are unless they have a truly, truly elite kid.