Dear High Schoolers: Go D1 or D2

This might sound crazy, but I'm actually going to pick my school based on...well, the school.

the team is a minor consideration wrote:

This might sound crazy, but I'm actually going to pick my school based on...well, the school.

That's the common sense wisdom your parents tell you. It means nothing. There is no way to truly understand the different experience that one school offers to the next. All schools sell you a story that will be nothing like your actual college experience. It sounds very similar from school to school.

not an alumni wrote:

the team is a minor consideration wrote:

This might sound crazy, but I'm actually going to pick my school based on...well, the school.

That's the common sense wisdom your parents tell you. It means nothing. There is no way to truly understand the different experience that one school offers to the next. All schools sell you a story that will be nothing like your actual college experience. It sounds very similar from school to school.

You act like nothing at all can be known about the school. There is always some uncertainty, but there is also a lot that you can base your decision on. You can know the reputation of the school in general and the specific department. You can know how successful the undergrad program is at placing students into the grad program you're interested in. You can know whether you like the general campus environment and the surrounding community (are you trying to tell me that if you visited NYU and Cornell, you couldn't distinguish any difference between what it might be like to live in those places for four years?). You can talk to friends who attend different schools and get their thoughts.

Of course I'll never know every relevant piece of information, but a lot of the things that I can know are a hell of a lot more important than how many miles per week their team runs. Unless you have the potential to go pro, it doesn't make sense to me to use track/XC as a deciding factor. I'm going to pick my school, and only once I've made that decision will I decide whether I want to join the team.

How fast were you that you were so dominant as to have no competition?

Well you just described the D2 school I run for.

Say it with me kids: "Division Doesn't Matter"

The school I go to sucks (basement of an already pathetic conference) and really is just an awful place to be. For those not in college yet, I IMPLORE you to look at the city you'll be in and really try to gauge the team's chemistry before making a decision. The place I am at now is Middle-of-nowhere garbage heap where 45 MPW is considered a lot and the "town" consists of a walmart and the school.

I wish I would've elected not to run in college and just enjoyed my time at some larger school, but I was so desperate to run in college that I thught this place was an excellent idea.

If you are slow (like me) just accept the facts and dont go heck-bent into searching for one of the few places that will let you walk-on when you can really enjoy life at a school you probably wont be running for.

Just my 2 cents

Of course division matters. The best 5k guy in D3 may be slower than the 50th best guy in D1. He would get lapped in an indoor 5k in D1.

Ducks quack wrote:

Of course division matters. The best 5k guy in D3 may be slower than the 50th best guy in D1. He would get lapped in an indoor 5k in D1.

The best 5k guy in DIII would probably not stack up with the best of the best in DI, but as far as division there are garbage schools in all three, and there are outstanding schools in all three. You really think that the guys at Colgate University would beat Adams state guys just because they are DI? Heck no! In fact there are some NAIA schools that could absolutely whoop some DI schools because they just kinda suck.

Thats why division really isnt THAT important, unless you are some absolute stud who can garner some money at your local P5 school.

The only thing about division i will admit matters is that D3 cant give athletic money, though if youre going D3 its likely an ademically rigorous school and youre not just in it for the money.

May I add, do some research on the coach as well. A lot of coaches are good talkers. Once you get to the school and are in the program for awhile...you realize the coach is all talk and nothing more. I second the point about team chemistry/teammates. It is great to have teammates you enjoy being around. However, it is not fun to be on a team where you are running alone because there is no one else close to your fitness to run with or your teammates do the bare minimum to get by.

I personally had a good d3 experience but the one thing I couldn't stand is that my team would train for conference championships then after that pretty much jog regionals to "save themselves for next year" we only had a cross country team and no track so most of my teammates didnt run again until summer. So "saving themselves" in November when they had a 6 month layoff ahead of them made absolutely no sense. I get most of us weren't making it to nationals but to purposely tank regionals made no sense

How DARE YOU! :)

Bad D1 teams do all this stuff too, I've seen it. There are far fewer bad D1 teams though if you're just picking at random.

I was the only serious runner on a chump d3 team. Ya I got to run in college, but I did like all my training alone after freshman year (we had a couple good guys that year - one graduated, one got lazy, and we went from having a good coach to a bad one). I was doing 100 mpw while teammates did 30-40 mpw. The bad coach I had for 3 years believed in 4-5 workouts a week, sometimes with a meet too. I pretty much did what I could to survive that and trained on my own, adding another 60-70 easy miles a week.

Our team goal was to not finish last in conference. We went 6th, 8th, 8th, 8th out of 10 in my 4 years. The women were 6th, 10th, 10th, 10th. No track team. I ran meets off direct athletics on my own and after my soph year, nobody but me trained out of xc season and maybe the summer. One guy played another sport.

For some reason the school had one or two good academic programs and we'd get a decent athlete now and then. They'd often run faster in their first two years than their last two.

We considered conference the end of the season and I only ran at regionals once, I was lucky it was in driving distance so we fielded anyone who wanted to go, which was me and one other guy.

That is what running for a truly crappy team is like. If I had to do it again, I'd run nirca, which wasn't a thing when I started college.

This. If you basically have no chance at success of any degree at the college level, find a school that you like an maybe run on your own or on a club team. Running really isn't so important that you need to throw away a very formative college experience for it.

You are clueless. There were 200 guys in D1 faster than the fastest guy in D3 in the mile last year. It would be silly for those 200 guys to have gone D3 and not had competition. Yes 200. It is not only the absolute studs who are better than D3. Division absolutely matters.

There are sooooooo many schools out there... like 1,000s and many of them are good and many of them will be a “good school for you”. People who say just pick a school based on academics are just to lazy to work hard and do a sport in college and want to act like they made a great life decision. If you want to run or play a spot in college, so it! There are soooooo many schools you can for sure find a school that is a great fit academically and athletically.

Some people want a really good school and want to run but that’s not their priority (pick a d3) lots of good schools and some that make running a fun side thing.

Want to party at so school and have a good time and run, tons of random d2 schools out there that are just happy you come out and don’t care what you do.

What a huge campus with a big football team and name recognition go to a power 5 or group of 5 school that doesn’t give a damn about running and you can prob a walk on.

And if you are goos in hs the combination of schools you can’t go to are endless.

YOU CAN FIND THE RIGHT SCHOOL FOR YOU AND PLAY A SPORT, it should absolutely be part of your criteria if you don’t want to be a nobody NARP.

Hey nerds,

You guys know nothing.

I picked my favorite campus, LBSU in California, and walked in to a stellar D1 program.

And hot petite under 95 lb girls everywhere! And I’m getting a killer degree on top of it all. Enjoy your D3 programs dorks! I’m gonna go meet some girls at the now open bars in Huntington Beach. Woo hoo!!!! Sucks to be you nerds!!

hahahaa wrote:

Hey nerds,

You guys know nothing.

I picked my favorite campus, LBSU in California, and walked in to a stellar D1 program.

And hot petite under 95 lb girls everywhere! And I’m getting a killer degree on top of it all. Enjoy your D3 programs dorks! I’m gonna go meet some girls at the now open bars in Huntington Beach. Woo hoo!!!! Sucks to be you nerds!!

In 2019 (the last full outdoor season) LBSU's fastest runners ran 3:56 for 1500 and 14:41 for 5000. The average SAT is 1145, and the average ACT 23. They were 12th of 15 teams at the MPSF Indoor Championship in 2020. LBSU is not a stellar D1 program, they are average at best. You are not getting a killer degree, LBSU is the definition of mediocre academically. Though now that I think about it, a dumb@ss like you would fit in quite nicely there.

He also included the real reason that he is so happy.

This thread is all wrong.

Shoulda been "Deer High Schoolers"