Maybe 3rd was a miracle to you but I don’t see it that way. All of these schools get 4:15 guys to just walk on drooling over the school, so as a coach you have the ammo to build a very capable distance team off of walk ons. Why else would you have mid majors that can qualify for NCAAs in XC. These are essentially the same exact guys that walk on to P5s but instead had enough sense to take the scholarship and not be enamored at the football team or name of the school. So do not cut these coaches any slack, aren’t they suppose to be the best coaches or am I wrong?[/quote]
This might also be the reason those kids are not very good/don't develop, because they picked a school based on the football team and not because they really truly care about getting better...Its harder to coach kids to the top when they are not intrinsically motivated.