Is Division 3 worth it?

Yes, some do. But it is misleading when recommending high schoolers go D3 by telling them that D1 and D3 compete at the same meets. High school kids don't know so they will assume that they will be competing against Power 5 schools every week when it is more likely that they will never race against a D1 team that they have heard of before.

I competed against D1 schools every season of indoor and outdoor track. If you live in the northeast and run an indoor season, you’re going to end up at one of a 4 of 5 tracks for a lot of your meets and lots of teams will be there. Plus, we ran IC4As and ECACs.

As to outdoors, chances are often more limited in the northeast, but you always had Penn and We did travel occasionally for early spring meets (Colonial Relays).

We competed against D1 schools only occasionally in cross country.

True, good point. Definitely not trying to mislead the OP but wanted to share my experience to a previous poster. And of course those experiences will vary depending on the school and their schedule.

:-)

Ex-D1 P5 wrote:

Nah, I never raced against any D3 dreamers in my 4 years in college, it was almost exclusively fellow D1 P5 competitors in my sections, heats, races. Some non-P5 D1ers might have sneaked in there but they weren't close enough to me to be noticed. Plus D3 schools couldn't afford to get to most of the meets my program went to.

How do you know who was D3 or not? Did you run Penn Relays? I competed there as did many D3 athletes. Many of the larger meets I competed at mostly had D1 schools, and strong ones at that (perennial D1 nats qualifiers, and one meet I beat a handful of guys who had just run at XC nats a couple months before).

How did he know who was D3? Because real runners know their competition. Just asking the question says you are clueless. Which meet did you run where you beat national qaifiers? I woukd like to review it. The best guy in D3 typically can't beat the top 100 guys in D1.

Just like 4 years ago when Lamere killed all D1 guys, all americans included with his 28:38 (14:06) last 5k. https://www.ustfccca.org/2016/04/featured/ian-lamere-and-the-art-of-solo-running

Yes Lamere won the slow heat and it was impressive. But picking one of the top D3 runners of all time to try to make a point that D3 guys compete in D1 meets is again just not true. How many D3 guys were in the 2 heats, 1? How many D1 guys were in the 2 heats 40? If a guy runs for Wisconsin, he goe to these meets. If a guy goes to Wisconsin Platteville or any other D3 school, he does not compete in D1 meets unless he is Lamere. Even then, Lamere didn't compete in D1 cross country meets even though the best D1 meet in the country is Nuttycomb which was just up the street from him.

I browsed the Wisconsin cross country schedule and the Wisconsin-Platteville schedule from last year. It appears that Wisconsin only competed against D1 schools and I don't believe that Platteville competed against any D1 schools. So for the posters trying to convince high school runners that if they run D3, they will be running in the same meets against the same competition as if they go D1, that is entirely untrue. And to say the competition is similar, please stop misleading these kids. 100 guys in D1 ran faster this year than the fastest guy in D3.

I think plenty of quality athletes have come from D3. Matt Groose ran 1:47/3:41. UW-Oshkosh Ryan Kleimenhagen ran sub 4 and 1:48. UW-Oshkosh. Last year Kyler Lueck-UW-Eau Claire ran 1:49 indoors and 3:44. Zach Lee-UW-Platt ran 3:44. Andrew Rock was a olympic gold medalist and silver medalist in the 400m 44.35. Wadeline Jonathas, Christy Cazzola, Emily Richards on the womens side to name a few. Last year Patel ran 13:51/28:40. Pretty sure 100 D1 guys beat him. Stop knocking.

And obviously lets not forget about Symmonds or Edwin Moses.

predictors wrote:

I browsed the Wisconsin cross country schedule and the Wisconsin-Platteville schedule from last year. It appears that Wisconsin only competed against D1 schools and I don't believe that Platteville competed against any D1 schools. So for the posters trying to convince high school runners that if they run D3, they will be running in the same meets against the same competition as if they go D1, that is entirely untrue. And to say the competition is similar, please stop misleading these kids. 100 guys in D1 ran faster this year than the fastest guy in D3.

The OP is not a blue chip D1 recruit, so it really doesn't matter which division he goes to -- he will have good competition either way. For the record, we raced D1 schools a couple times a season when I ran D3, not that it made much difference as a 25:XX guy.

Much more important to choose the right program than the division at this level. It would be a different question if he had run say 4:10.

predictors wrote:

How did he know who was D3? Because real runners know their competition. Just asking the question says you are clueless. Which meet did you run where you beat national qaifiers? I woukd like to review it. The best guy in D3 typically can't beat the top 100 guys in D1.

You seem angry. Why? I'm not sure why people that say D3 can offer great competitive opportunities would upset the parent of a D1 athlete...

No D3 runner is under the impression that they are facing as high a level of competition as their D1 counterparts. In many cases, it's just a better level of competition for them. I was a good D3 runner at a school with great academics. What was better for me - becoming a D3 AA or being in the top 7 on an Ivy League team that couldn't come close to qualifying for D1 NCAAs? There are definitely days where I think about how I would have developed in the Ivy League, but I am 100% happy with the decision I made. The school I attended fit what I wanted better than any other school that I looked at (D1, D2, or D3). This is what mattered/matters to me - not whether or not you get to travel to Nuttycombe.

The OP ran 4:18. It's possible he's new to running or hasn't had the opportunity to train consistently. That said, it's unlikely that he is going to be a professional runner. If running is going to be an important portion of his college experience (but not his desired profession), he absolutely should look for the right combination of coach/team/level of competition that best fits what he wants. Then it should factor into his decision just like the academic programs, school size, location, etc. Other folks may disagree, but I think it is insane to pick a college based on whether you get to fly to a few regular season cross country meets.

Those runners are all incredible. But listing a handful of world class runners who went to D3 schools doesn't change the facts. I am not knocking D3 at all by stating simple facts. I am the first on these boards to recommend that runners consider D3 because it is a better experience for 90% of the very good high school runners. But some are misleading high school kids by telling them that they will be at the indoor meet at Iowa State or at Stanford or at Nuttycomb for XC when that is not true. Just lay out the facts instead of calling out the best D3 runners of all-time because that also misleads the kids into thinking they will be competing kids of that caliber when thise kids come across every few years but 100 of them exist every year in D1. It is a fact that the fastest 5k for D3 this year was not in the top 100 for D1. That is mind-blowing when you tell most D3 runners that the best guy in all of D3 wouldn't travel to the conference meet for some D1 teams. Lueck ran great at 1:49 last year but 40 guys in D1 ran faster. He would have been a world away from qualifying for nationals with that time. There will always be 1 or 2 great D3 runners every year despite running D3.

Because they would also show up on relevant D1 performance lists, NCAA regional/preliminary meets, and at NCAAs. I never saw any non-D1 singlets in my races at Drake, Texas Relays, Sun Angel, Stanford, and the rest. I rarely raced in the early season rust busters where lower tier D1 athletes went for conference meet seed marks. If you ran at a D3 program against D1 guys they had to have been from directional schools, minor private schools, and alphabet state schools.

It all depends on what you are looking for. A 4:18 can get you into some mid majors with the potential of getting some school paid for. There are plenty of D1 conferences where that time would be in the top 20 for the indoor such as the Horizon League, OCV, Conference USA and several more. If you want school paid for then find a Mid Major School in a garbage conference that will probably cover your tuition. However you will most likely not get quality or consistent coaching. Many coaches use those programs as a stepping stone to a better job or keep their job because results are easy to come by in a weak conference. Not saying all Mid Major Coaches are bad, but there are plenty of Mid Major programs that thrive on mediocrity.

If you want to go to school and become a better runner then find a school that has a program that fits you and your academic needs regardless of division. There are plenty of D3 Schools where you will get quality coaching and develop with the only downside being they wont pay for your school. There are also plenty of D2 and D1 schools you could contact and they will give you the opportunity to walk on. If you are serious about your training and performance you will stand a good chance of earning a scholarship down the road.

Long story short is find the program that will help you most in your development and don't get hung up on what division it is. There are plenty of D3 and D2 programs with athletes without scholarship that would walk all over some of the D1 programs in their area. At the same time if you can get into a solid D1 program that will pay for your school then by all means take that route.

Ex-D1 P5 wrote:

Because they would also show up on relevant D1 performance lists, NCAA regional/preliminary meets, and at NCAAs. I never saw any non-D1 singlets in my races at Drake, Texas Relays, Sun Angel, Stanford, and the rest. I rarely raced in the early season rust busters where lower tier D1 athletes went for conference meet seed marks. If you ran at a D3 program against D1 guys they had to have been from directional schools, minor private schools, and alphabet state schools.

Well perhaps you are not all that observant. I ran D3 and at Drake, and my team did three of the four years I was there. We had teams entered in the college 4X100, 4X 400, 4X800 and DMR, and in the university 4X 1600. The latter against all the D1 teams, former against D3 and D2 (and some of those D2 teams would compete well against D1)--e.g., 7:20s for 4X8, 9:40s-50s for the DMR. D3 were usually a notch lower, but often they'd stick their best guy in the 1st leg of the 4X1600. One year my friend (didn't know him at the time), lead the 1st leg, handing off in 4:04.

I'm older now, but my kid ran D2, and ran in some large west coast D1 XC invites, and there were several D2 and D3 schools in those meets.

predictors wrote:

How did he know who was D3? Because real runners know their competition. Just asking the question says you are clueless. Which meet did you run where you beat national qaifiers? I woukd like to review it. The best guy in D3 typically can't beat the top 100 guys in D1.

It was an indoor meet in the early 2000s, almost none of my meet results from then are available online. Beat another guy later that year who went on to get AA two seasons later (and ran sub 8/14/29). My times weren’t that fast but respectable. Also just because guys raced at Nats doesn’t mean they’re in the top 200-300, as the top guys from non qualifying teams who didn’t qualify individually are often better than the #4-7 runners on the worst qualifying teams. I actually lapped a D1 guy in that race who was on the traveling squad for his school (decent regional team but not a qualifier). I wasn’t even one of the very top guys in D3, but I beat probably >80% of D1 runners I competed against in XC and track meets. And I think it would be a very strange year where the top D3 guy can’t place top 100 in D1. Just looking at last year’s performance list there was a 13:51 and two more sub-14:10, and 14:30 doesn’t get you in the top 20. There are definitely guys at D1 Nats who don’t run that fast, whether you care to acknowledge it or not. You can claim 13:51 isn’t top 100 in D1 and I’m too lazy to look it up but it would surprise me.

The top 5k D3 time indoor this year was outside the top 100 in D1. Patel was a stud but even his outdoor 5kbwoukd only have been 40th in D1. Tyler Day ran 13:15 indoor this year. Patel would have gotten lapped.

predictors wrote:

The top 5k D3 time indoor this year was outside the top 100 in D1. Patel was a stud but even his outdoor 5kbwoukd only have been 40th in D1. Tyler Day ran 13:15 indoor this year. Patel would have gotten lapped.

Okay but at least in D3 almost no one runs 5k indoors, and if they do it’s unlikely to be at big meets with strong (D1) competition. I did it once during my whole collegiate career, our conference events were 1m/2m. All of my longer distance PRs were at big invitationals with mostly D1 schools, it’s just the reality that D3 athletes don’t have as many opportunities to run fast times. That doesn’t mean that the top tier can’t mix it up with the second-tier (outside of the top ~50) D1 guys. And very occasionally the best D3 guys are better than the best D1 runners, Nick Symmonds being one of the more recent examples (and maybe the only Olympian I’ve beaten although there’s an age gap).