X Country College teams w/ 30 members

We had a big team of about 30. We also had a lot of duel and tri meets back then, where everyone ran together, so it was easier to make an educated guess to know who would run varsity and who would run JV at invitationals.

At Lot of times the top JV runner on our team would run a faster time than a varsity runner or two at an invitational, so that would bode well for their chances of getting bumped up to varsity the next time.

Oh wow I didn't even know they had JV in college

That makes a little more sense then. So are 15 and 15 split between JV and varsity

There is usually no formal JV squad. Might be more helpful to think of it in terms of "athletes who run at conference" and "the rest of the team." Depending on resources, non conference runners may red shirt, or run in regular season and open races, or just burn a season or eligibility not racing. Conference rosters are typically limited to 7 to 10 athletes (varies by conference) and NCAA meets are always restricted to 7.

Not uncommon for teams to have well over the number of runners needed to fill a team (especially on the women's side).

I have always wondered why people walk on to big teams where they can look and see that they are way down on the depth chart. Sometimes guys improve, but more often athletes become "JV all stars" (career non conference level athletes) or get frustrated and quit. I try to emphasize to high school kids who tell me athletics is an important part of their decision that they should look at schools where they can be between 4th to 12th on the XC team. You don't want to be on a team where you are the best right away, but if you can not compete for top 10 on the team you are missing out on the college athletic experience.

The only meet where we had real entry limitations was NCAA regionals and most of who was/wasn't running was known by then. The coach would maybe consider 4-5 people for the final 3 slots.

Otherwise, everyone ran the season opening meet, the conference meet, and one other meet. The rest of the schedule had meets paired together and you would run either one meet or the other, in rare cases someone would run both. Meets where the whole team would run often had a varsity race and a JV/open race and we'd just divide the team. It wasn't that hard.

I can not name a single DI conference that allows more than 10 runners to race, and I would say the norm is either 8 or 9.

Most posters are former 15:30 type D3 guys.

Just started falling cross-country and I see on some of the really big schools like NC State and Arkansas that they have like 30 women on the team

So I've heard that pretty much all those teams have more than one Squad running

So can someone clarify a little more what's going on with the runners who are like 20 to 30 on the team

Do they ever get a chance to run or are they just there more subtle workouts and just in case and to cheer the other Runners on and to be part of the team in training and spirit

Anyway just curious because I had no idea there would be that many girls on a team. It seems like an awful lot for a sport where 7 can enter the race at least officially in NCAA championships

Anyway I appreciate the feedback so would love to hear a little more about the Dynamics at the big schools in division 1

go go away wrote:

Most posters are former 15:30 type D3 guys.

well every major D1 women's program seems to have more than 25 runners

Can you comment a little on how many men's teams usually have and how did the women's team handle so many runners

What the one poster said about having everyone run at a couple of meets then having to pick and choose for the conference championships and Beyond seems to make sense

NC State has 29 women on the team

I ran at a mid-sized conference D1 in the northeast. We had about 20-25 runners on the team. As previous posters said, the top varsity runners were the ones who traveled to the big meets (e.g. Notre Dame, Pre-Nats). Everyone else ran at a couple home meets, and at Paul Short (top 7 ran in the A race, everyone else in the B race). Occasionally the runners outside the top 7 also got to run at smaller invitationals, mainly against smaller D1 and D3 teams.

The pecking order was fluid, though. If you were say the 15th runner at the beginning of the year but ran your butt off and improved all year, you would make the conference meet and get to run at regionals. The dynamics were great, everyone trained together but there were obvious separations during intervals depending on your fitness level.

To the poster who said they encouraged athletes to look at teams they can be the 4-12 runner on, I get why you say that...but the model I described above is optimal to me. All I wanted was a chance to train and race on a team, and get a good education at a school I enjoyed. Whether I was scoring points at a rinky-dink conference meet or last place on a nationally ranked team was immaterial.

That's cool yeah I could see having like 22/23 Runners butt why do you think a lot of schools have 28-29 or even 30

Do you think that's too many? Do you think they just do it because they feel like there's strength in numbers and it keeps everyone more motivated

Ezrun wrote:

Do you think that's too many? Do you think they just do it because they feel like there's strength in numbers and it keeps everyone more motivated

30+ to offset 85 football scholarships.

Each girl on the team counts as 3 athletes

(XC, indoor TF, outdoor TF). It’s a sneaky way football crazy ADs stay out of Title 9 trouble.

Ezrun wrote:

That's cool yeah I could see having like 22/23 Runners butt why do you think a lot of schools have 28-29 or even 30

Do you think that's too many? Do you think they just do it because they feel like there's strength in numbers and it keeps everyone more motivated

As people have pointed out with woman, it is to help balance out other sports. With guys, how many people do you think would be right? Seems like 20-30 is the reasonable number. You want to give a half dozen freshmen (say guys who ran 9:25 in HS) a chance to see what happens when you bump their mileage from 45 to 75. You will have 3-4 guys who are injured and another 3-4 guys who are really more of 1500/3000m specialists.

I have a son and daughter in p5 confedences. Teams are similar with about 14 guys and 22 women. They typically 1 or 2 freshmen guys after a month but women seem to lose interest on their own due to numbers. The non varsity usually get 3 meets but almost no track meets which is when the lower 1/3 of the women quit.

Sliding Scale wrote:

I [cannot] name a single DI conference that allows more than 10 runners to race, and I would say the norm is either 8 or 9.

Up to twelve runners per team may compete in the Ivy League championship (aka Heptagonal meet).

my hs team would have a 7 man line up with an additional 3 as backups to make the varsity group 10 people strong. the rest would be just jv and would only ever be split up in workouts. bronze (lower jv), silver (higher jv), gold (varsity)

everyone was still on the school's "varsity team" but only that varsity group would ever run individual and championship races (excluding jv who might run the freshmen/sophmore race maybe once or twice)

Remember that some of the guys taking up those 30 spots might be 800/1500m runners who don't really intend to be major xc contributors, but have a much better training situation with the xc team than with the fall track group. They may run a couple of races, but when they aren't competing at the conference meet or beyond, that wasn't really the point anyway...and every once in a while, one of those guys will surprise and contribute to the post season group.

Something that most of you are probably not aware of is that the website and the roster are not the same thing. My son told me that they list 20 guys on the website even when only 14 are on the roster. Some are guys who have been cut and some are mid distance guys that sometimes train with the team. It makes them feel good to have their parents see their pictures online.

Ozzie wrote:

Remember that some of the guys taking up those 30 spots might be 800/1500m runners who don't really intend to be major xc contributors, but have a much better training situation with the xc team than with the fall track group. They may run a couple of races, but when they aren't competing at the conference meet or beyond, that wasn't really the point anyway...and every once in a while, one of those guys will surprise and contribute to the post season group.

This works the other way too sometimes. I mentioned our team ad 20-25 XC runners, but then the pure mid-d guys (mostly just 800 guys) were on the track roster. When track season came around, about 1/3 of the XC guys remained on the XC roster and ran meets unattached, while the half that could realistically score points at conference were on the track roster. I'm sure the rules for this type of stuff vary by school and league, though.