How common is it for a college coach to cut a runner for not running fast enough?

At my school, if you weren't top ten at the time trial in the fall you were cut, regardless of scholarship status.

Pretty common, especially for D1.

joedirt wrote:

At my school, if you weren't top ten at the time trial in the fall you were cut, regardless of scholarship status.

You are telling me your college coach would cut a top 5 returning scholarship runner for having a bad practice?

tycobb wrote:

joedirt wrote:

At my school, if you weren't top ten at the time trial in the fall you were cut, regardless of scholarship status.

You are telling me your college coach would cut a top 5 returning scholarship runner for having a bad practice?

It's not necessarily about an upperclassman having one bad workout, it is about the quality of freshmen and transfers who show up for XC. In your scenario, top 5 XC runner. Yes, at my school, my coach felt he needed to take a full ride away from a senior so he could give partials to better runners.

600yd/600m man wrote:

tycobb wrote:

You are telling me your college coach would cut a top 5 returning scholarship runner for having a bad practice?

It's not necessarily about an upperclassman having one bad workout, it is about the quality of freshmen and transfers who show up for XC. In your scenario, top 5 XC runner. Yes, at my school, my coach felt he needed to take a full ride away from a senior so he could give partials to better runners.

Just curious how that works, that is, how soon is the scholarship available? At the end of the semester or the end of the school year?

go for it man wrote:

600yd/600m man wrote:

It's not necessarily about an upperclassman having one bad workout, it is about the quality of freshmen and transfers who show up for XC. In your scenario, top 5 XC runner. Yes, at my school, my coach felt he needed to take a full ride away from a senior so he could give partials to better runners.

Just curious how that works, that is, how soon is the scholarship available? At the end of the semester or the end of the school year?

This just doesn't add up to me. Obviously, I don't know what goes on with every college program and possibly a bad coach. You can't take a scholarship away from a senior once the school year started and it isn't immediately available. Cutting varsity runners from last year and only keeping ten is in my opinion a terrible idea and bad coaching. I'm guess the countries best programs keep at least 15 especially if they have future potential.

It's dog eat dog, or another example of how NCAA fails to protect the best interests of athletes -- depending on your perspective.

Personally, this is why I think you should use your talent to get into an ivy and take the lifetime of advantages that come with that over four years of what amounts to so-so pay for backbreaking work.

tycobb wrote:

go for it man wrote:

Just curious how that works, that is, how soon is the scholarship available? At the end of the semester or the end of the school year?

This just doesn't add up to me. Obviously, I don't know what goes on with every college program and possibly a bad coach. You can't take a scholarship away from a senior once the school year started and it isn't immediately available. Cutting varsity runners from last year and only keeping ten is in my opinion a terrible idea and bad coaching. I'm guess the countries best programs keep at least 15 especially if they have future potential.

Yeah, it didn't add up to me, either, for the same reason. If a senior cross country runner is cut in the fall the coach definitely doesn't get any money back in the current semester. I'm not sure whether they get to use that scholarship for someone else in the spring semester.

My son's team has 6-8 recruits every year. Two get cut by the 3rd week of school and 2-3 others end up disappearing by senior year.

faster than u wrote:

My son's team has 6-8 recruits every year. Two get cut by the 3rd week of school and 2-3 others end up disappearing by senior year.

If an athlete is good enough to make the roster, what changes in three weeks? If you claimed that a couple quit at the beginning of every year, I could believe that. Not every team and school is a good fit for every student. The transition to college can be tough. No coach in his right mind would consistently cut brand new athletes every year. A high turnover rate does not reflect well on a program, and should certainly be a red flag to potential recruits.

I've seen it happen. High school phenom discovers beer/sex/parties after HS graduation and shows up 15 pounds overweight and out-of-shape. Cut after a semester because he couldn't get disciplined again.

Athletes can also lose focus after arriving on campus for the reasons listed above. Kid used to racing 5K XC cannot adjust to the training and focus required for 8/10K distance. Sometimes, a runner just had a freakishly good junior or senior campaign that got them recruited but, that was their high point. Kids also get homesick, don't mesh with teammates, cannot adjust to a different coaching philosophy, the pressure to perform to keep their scholarship, etc.

The school doesn't really take a reputation hit. Unless there is some Salazar or Arizona styled abuse happening, the cut either quit running and stay at the school, transfer quietly, or disappear back home without talking much.

The program does pretty well. Guys and girls all like the coach and they seem to have dozens of good runners come on visits and ask to be on the team. But when 8 new 9:20 high schoolers have all summer to train and then a few weeks with the team, it probably is easy for the coach to see who is on the tail end in workouts and the first meet or two. If 2 freshmen run 25 minutes and 4 run 25:45 and 2 run 26:45, that is a big gap. Having turnover is common for most teams. When there are 16 guys on the roster and only 7 competing at conference and regionals, some guys self cut after sophomore year.

tycobb wrote:

joedirt wrote:

At my school, if you weren't top ten at the time trial in the fall you were cut, regardless of scholarship status.

You are telling me your college coach would cut a top 5 returning scholarship runner for having a bad practice?

Unless they were injured, yes. Saw a lot of freshmen recruits have their scholarship pulled after a year as well if they didn’t produce or partied too much. There are plenty of guys working hard for those spots / scholarships. There were at least two walk ins that earned scholarships and became All Americans during my time there because they were treated equally.

I got cut. But I also made the team the following year walking on.

We won our Power 5 conference champs about every other year for reference how good we were.

Coach also kept as large roster as the AD/Director would let him. Its mind boggling the guy who said his coach cut anyone outside the top 10.... does he know runners develop and improve with consistent training?

Mostly I saw significant reductions in scholarship money, very few were actually cut.

Often the kids show up completely unprepared for college, much less collegiate athletics.

Maybe the distance coach was only allowed to keep 10? Focus may have been on sprints/jumps/hurdles/throws with a goal to simply field a cross country team.

NotPC wrote:

Mostly I saw significant reductions in scholarship money, very few were actually cut.

Often the kids show up completely unprepared for college, much less collegiate athletics.

Can you blame them though. A stud high school kid is 18 and may be running 40 mpw with easy workouts.

He gets thrown into a program with 80+ mpw and hard workouts. And then running with 23 year old grown men.

Of course they are unprepared! They need time to develop and grow.

Why recognize they have talent and potential- give them a scholarship- and when they don't immediately pan out you yank that?

joedirt wrote:

At my school, if you weren't top ten at the time trial in the fall you were cut, regardless of scholarship status.

I am really interested in this practice. Can you give us more information? The response below is from joedirte (with an "e") so I am not sure that is you.

Was the time trial before the first meet? Were you expected to show up to the first practice in racing shape? I am not doubting you, more interested.

Also, since most running scholarships are for track, not XC, did the guys who were cut just train until track season or was it a true elimination from athletics?

Was the time trial on a track or on the official XC course?

Experienced coaches can tell pretty quickly who has high-level talent once they are in practice for a few weeks. The athletes who don't have high-level talent will need to have certain other things to have a chance at contributing in a D1 setting. They need to be coachable, hungry, and resilient. If they aren't, chances of success are low, and it saves everyone time and trouble to cut them sooner rather than later. Marginal talents with bad attitudes/bad lifestyles almost never succeed and they are no fun to be around.

Most coaches will keep a marginally talented recruited kid around if they bring positivity and coachability to practice with them every day. They occasionally become contributors down the road, and even if they don't, they are often the most fun kids to coach. But a D1 program does not exist to help non-contributors become slightly faster non-contributors, or to give non-contributors a positive experience. The coach's time is finite and the program budget is finite. So the marginally talented better be low-maintenance and positive.