Training elements?
What type of culture? (Specific)
What are the key elements at the college level
Training elements?
What type of culture? (Specific)
What are the key elements at the college level
Talented athletes
High mileage
It is talent not mileage. Some top programs do average mileage.
They do pushups, thyroid meds and have faulty doorbells. Some have potato patches.
Altitude sets a lot of programs apart at all levels.
Beyond that, recruiting and coaching.
They’re either insanely, stupidly, talented; they are pretty talented and have an amazing coach; or they’re just a group of good friends who are willing to die on the cross country course for each other and are also pretty talented
Mindset to win at all cost.
At the college level, they recruited the best talent and have a good coach.
At the high school level the best teams have large rosters. If you have enough kids you will find 5 that have some basic talent and are willing to work hard.
Large teams are not common at the college level, but a team like BYU has found a way to leverage this approach.
YMMV wrote:
They do pushups, thyroid meds and have faulty doorbells. Some have potato patches.
Some eat a lot of meat. There is always the tainted meat excuse.
on one knee wrote:
Talented athletes
Maybe at the college / pro level.
How do you explain the high school that year after year takes kids from the hallway and creates teams that, at the worst, compete for a league title and at the best compete for regional and state titles?
CoachB wrote:
on one knee wrote:
Talented athletes
Maybe at the college / pro level.
How do you explain the high school that year after year takes kids from the hallway and creates teams that, at the worst, compete for a league title and at the best compete for regional and state titles?
In HS you can out train your competition. The talent level to run 16:00 (i.e. 5 16:00 guys is going to be a real solid XC team) is decent but it is at the level where there are probably 3-4/100 kids. You just need to get the kids out and have them run 40-50miles/year round with some sane workouts. It is real easy to write down on paper. To actually do it though is hard.
As you move up to college that goes away. Some coaches are better than others but they are close. If you can have a big team, you can take flyers (let that 9:40 kid who did it off 30mpw join and see what happens) but you will already be dealing with pretty talented runners.
If NCAA would allow an athletes to score points in meets during a competitive season only if 22 years old or younger, which would eliminate many of the Africans who are at their physical peak, then success is about how fast the athlete is (100, 200m, 400m) and the coach's system.
Mileage can compensate for lack of speed by allowing athletes to have a sustained, high turnover, but even then these runners usually will lose to a much faster runner in the 800m-1500m, and even lose in the 5K in the big races.
Therefore, the coach's system in the 800m-1500m is important, as many of the top NCAA runners are fast enough to excel and to win.
At the 10k level in NCAA, exempting for the PEDs or over-age competitors, raw speed tends to matter less that does the runner's work load and their will to win.
Well funded. More money = more scholarships = better athletes = more winning.
on one knee wrote:
Talented athletes
First answer was the correct one. Can't make a race horse out of a donkey.
Well sort of but that is also the common element of all mediocre teams and most bad teams.
Talent is the answer at high school also. The schools that always do well have more talent. The kids are faster and almost always smarter. The best gene pool creates wealthier kids whose parent chose to live in a better neighborhood. Also, good programs tend to have a few transfers either exclusively for running or just because when the family moves to the area, it researches the best school and the best running team and that is where they choose to move to. There are always some teams that are good for a few years and then they disappear again. That shows how much talent has to do with it. If you think that the best coach can go to a random school and get a bunch of kids to run 15:30, you are crazy.
Agree with this..
Trying to coach good poor kids a little more difficult. You have a few good years if you get two or three kids out of 10 willing to work.
I’ll never forget going to state final and the big team came rolling in, in two huge Greyhound type buses and a truck pulling a big giant cooking grill.
Our team had one tent and one of the parents on a Harley Davidson who went out and got a fruit tray.
I just looked over in awe of that state championship caliber team.
Robert E . Lee wrote:
Agree with this..
Trying to coach good poor kids a little more difficult. You have a few good years if you get two or three kids out of 10 willing to work..
Intriguing insight...I didn't realize how much change there was in typical HS athletics since I went to high school, when poorer students trained for and played sports with such effort in hope of a scholarship as their only way out of the life their parent(s) were leading.
My HS had low middle class on one side of the river, and poor on the other, and remained a powerhouse in sports in the conference for a couple of decades, until busing.
on one knee wrote:
Talented athletes
+1
Mileage and a culture focused on specific goals and especially winning helps, but at the college level, talent is king.