X Country College teams w/ 30 members

NAU has averaged about 18 guys on the website over the past 5 years. I will point out one more time that not all are necessarily on the official roster. But let's assume that the best program ever, has about 18 guys training. 30 is silly.

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.

Correct. I was one of those guys. Took me 4 years to develop into a top 10 cc guy but was too 2-3 800/1500 immediately freshman indoor season less than a month after running a full marathon well under 3 hours. I trained every day, twice a day with the CC team. It was a race every day just to keep up. I don't know how I didn't get hurt. But I will witness that strength is speed over time. I could never have run as fast as I did at 800/1500 without the summer/fall strength training, mileage that I went through. I wasn't running more than 35 miles after hs graduation but we started at 70mpw in the fall. I was shocked! Coach however customized interval/repetition work, tempo etc by training groups but the mileage expectation was the same for everyone. I obviously can't do that to developing hs runners but I somehow adapted without injury. My freshman track times destroyed my hs times and I was beating state champions from hs when I could barely place. 10 months I went from 4:29 to 4:17 indoors.

One thing that inspired me was that guys like Earl Jones Central Michigan and Derek Peterson Missouri ran CC and wasn't afraid of the distance but really was supportive of their top 7 even if they weren't able to represent at regionals or nationals.

I feel fortunate to have had an understanding coach that knew how to develop talent over time. I think what an athlete has in their heart about their personal goals and passion for the sport determines whether they stick with it or not.

This thread brings me back to this presentation. I remember sitting in on this and being irritated. It was pretty much about how to manage 12 Big 10 level women while simultaneously trying to keep 38 other athletes, of varying ability, who will never run in a Big 10 championship, happy.

As others have stated, the obvious reason for a roster this large is title ix. While coaches have different opinions, most would give a number between 12 and 20 if asked what they feel the optimal team size would be.

I've seen a lot of D2 and D3 teams that have 15-20. 30+ would be a stretch unless you've got a bigger coaching staff.

The slower guys on my D3 team (me included) ran either lower quality d3 meets or the open/JV race of bigger D3 meets. The top 7 ran the bigger D3 or D1 races. We also ran a few local dual meets where everyone ran, although those weren't the rule. If a meet was out of the area (most of our races weren't overnight trips), only the top 7 would go.

Same general rules applied to track meets. For some meets, the better athletes went to small D1 meets while the rest did the local D3 meet.

We maxed out at 12 when I was in college but we raced against a few teams with 30-40. It was no big deal in an age when nearly everything we ran was dual or tri meet. Taking that many guys to an away meet would mean more meal money but you usually got $5 so there wasn't much bank breaking. And even if a school didn't take everyone to an away meet usually half of your meets were at home and there were a lot more of them than there are now. Penn State always seemed to have upwards of 30 and they'd run multiple teams, Penn State, Penn State A, Penn State B, etc. at their meets. I think the "alphabet" guys only got to tun at home.

Charles Torpey let anyone who wanted to run at LaSalle do so as long as they did the work. He told me as long as they did he'd find places for them to race. If you look at results from the Open Race at Paul Short you'll find runners from some schools that are entered in one of the other races. I've seen schools split their teams and have two different races on the same day.

It can be done but it's unusual now mostly, I think, because a 30 man team creates Title IX problems, Conversely, having a huge number of women in a team helps avoid Title IX problems.

My D3 team had like 20 and I have no idea why half those guys were on the team. Didn't travel to any meets besides local bus trip joke meets.

My college had 15+ on the roster. The term Varsity or JV was never used. Runners 1-7 were called the “Travel Team”. Runners 8 and up had about 2-3 opportunities to prove themselves, then their season was over early to mid October. Although everyone still trained the whole season and the 8th man and sometimes 9th went to Regionals and Nationals as backup.

HRE wrote:

We maxed out at 12 when I was in college but we raced against a few teams with 30-40. It was no big deal in an age when nearly everything we ran was dual or tri meet. Taking that many guys to an away meet would mean more meal money but you usually got $5 so there wasn't much bank breaking. And even if a school didn't take everyone to an away meet usually half of your meets were at home and there were a lot more of them than there are now. Penn State always seemed to have upwards of 30 and they'd run multiple teams, Penn State, Penn State A, Penn State B, etc. at their meets. I think the "alphabet" guys only got to tun at home.

At away meets Harry would declare 7, but run 10-12 by agreement.

Home meets were usually 7 declared with 20+ undeclared. Additionaly an all comers race was run separately, which included the "F Troup", a collection of misfit 800 guys and sprinters.

The HEPS allow 12 in their championship.

I was a D3 back of pack type in CC.

Nearly every meet allowed 12 formally.

They would be nice and let more of us in but not counted in score.

Coach wanted everyone to run cross country including 400 and middle distance specialist.

Didn't the Ivy have more than 7 at heps plus a scrubs race?

rocky mathey wrote:

Didn't the Ivy have more than 7 at heps plus a scrubs race?

Heps roster is 12 runners per team. I think a lot of other conferences have 10 or 12 for their conference meet.

Haven't heard of a scrubs race at heps but maybe in the past they used to?

I ran at CU in the early 90’s. Our varsity finished 11th and 2nd at Nationals, training under Coach Q (Jerry Quiller). The other guys (10-20) had a nickname “Team Hack,” competing at smaller regional meets like CSU, Air Force, and Ft. Hayes. While there were lots of freshman, walk ons (several from Jersey), and misfit middle distance specialists in the group, our volunteer coach (Mark Wetmore) trained us pretty hard and we scored a majority of the distance points come outdoor Big 8’s (which we hosted). Alan Culpepper, Jay Kleckler, and Steven Roeper thrived under Mark’s emphasis on patient aerobic development. As a member of “Team Hack” it was fun to witness Mark’s initial coaching success first hand and he made all of us feel like we were part of the team, training together to accomplish our goals.

I can't recall any declaring at dual and tri meets. It was just the first seven, whoever they were. What's the furthest down in the alphabet you can recall PSU going? I think they had an "E" team in a meet, maybe USTFF Regionals, one year.

how does that work? how does that work? wrote:

anyone have any insight about what it's actually like to be on a team with 30 members

Do they basically have two squads of 10 with a practice team of 10 Reserves

Does each Runner get ranked so they know where they are?

Anyway just curious it seems like a lot of Runners when you can only have 7 run in a meet

Are we talking college or high school. My high school had about 60 guys but it was clear who were the top and and the narrowing down between 7-10 was done by coaches. They did not rank people. But everyone knew who were the guys who were set on varsity squad. Who was on the cusp and who had no chance.

In college 30 guys seems ridiculous to me. I feel like most D1 teams were around with 5-8 of those being guys in their first two years who would get cut. From my experience there were always about 10-12 guys on a D1 team that could be a contributor. The conference team was 9 so slots 6 and 7 on the regional/national team could be up for grabs. But there was never much doubt about who were the top 5.

Whoops, most college teams have 15-20 guys on roster.

why does everyone care so much about how many people are on a college cross country team? like I guess yeah if you're a D1 school solely focused on winning then you don't really need that many, but a lot of D1 schools are never going to be that good, and definitely D2 and D3 are more about training hard and having fun, which more guys on the team definitely helps with. And I know it's D3, but if you look at NCC, Williams Haverford, Johns Hopkins, all have 30-40 guys on their rosters and it doesn't seem to stop them from doing well.

purpledow wrote:

why does everyone care so much about how many people are on a college cross country team? like I guess yeah if you're a D1 school solely focused on winning then you don't really need that many, but a lot of D1 schools are never going to be that good, and definitely D2 and D3 are more about training hard and having fun, which more guys on the team definitely helps with. And I know it's D3, but if you look at NCC, Williams Haverford, Johns Hopkins, all have 30-40 guys on their rosters and it doesn't seem to stop them from doing well.

This. XC is an experience. More people on the team means more friends as far as I'm concerned. Things would get boring real quick if only the top 12 were around.

purpledow wrote:

why does everyone care so much about how many people are on a college cross country team? like I guess yeah if you're a D1 school solely focused on winning then you don't really need that many, but a lot of D1 schools are never going to be that good, and definitely D2 and D3 are more about training hard and having fun, which more guys on the team definitely helps with. And I know it's D3, but if you look at NCC, Williams Haverford, Johns Hopkins, all have 30-40 guys on their rosters and it doesn't seem to stop them from doing well.

There definitely are coaches who don't want to bother with people who are not going to help them place well at conference or regional meets but there are also coaches who want to help anyone who wants to run faster do it. You mention Haverford. Tom Donnelly told me that he just wants to coach nice kids who love to run. But Title IX is a real factor in how freely a coach can do that. When Bob Rothenberg started coaching at Brown he took anyone who wanted to run and coached them and had big teams, upwards of 30 most years. But then Brown came under Title IX restrictions and he couldn't go over 20 or 21 men in his team anymore.