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.
I'm sorry you don't like that some of us were serious about our competitive running. When you're at a school that is regularly at NCAA's and with guys trying to be All American then it is not a social club. Not to say there isn't a social aspect, my best friends a decade later were my college teammates. But the competitive aspect was very important, it was our coach's job to win conference titles and get to nationals. That's how he paid his bills and put food on his family's table. He was not running a social club where his objective was for the kids to have fun, if you were never going to contribute you got cut regardless of whether you were well-liked.
I had high school teammates who went to lower-tier D1 schools or D2 and their experience was much different. It was a lot more focused on having fun. At a good D1 school it is a lot fun if you are someone who enjoys competition and pushing yourself in running. But fun is not the goal. I'd say over 40% of the athletes we brought in while I was there were cut. But I would not trade that experience for anything. It was a blast and I think it provided me a lot of benefits later in life. But it is definitely not for everyone.