Hello,
I currently coach in Southern Ohio. I have a high school athlete who is interested in Xavier. He has run 16:21/4:37/10:01. He's motivated to run D1, but looking at results, we see Xavier is not very good in the big east nor as a team. Do they not take it seriously? Funding? I see they just achieved a new coach, but overall- still no good results after their first track meet. A 9:15 steeple was the most impressive run I saw.
Ohio Coach wrote:
Hello,
I currently coach in Southern Ohio. I have a high school athlete who is interested in Xavier. He has run 16:21/4:37/10:01. He's motivated to run D1, but looking at results, we see Xavier is not very good in the big east nor as a team. Do they not take it seriously? Funding? I see they just achieved a new coach, but overall- still no good results after their first track meet. A 9:15 steeple was the most impressive run I saw.
Read this (just verifies that Xavier does give athletic scholarships in all of its sports):
https://www.xavier.edu/undergraduate-admission/admission-process/prospective-student-atheletesI looked also at the male athletes at Xavier, and they are piss poor for a D1 program. Your athlete can make that team for sure. I could not find any indication that he could get any scholarship money, but I doubt it, and if so, it would be a very small amount.
My guess is that they get very little funding. Those runners on that team are not typical D1 quality runners.
You can find crappy programs like that if you want, so your athlete can run D1 if he really wants to. I'm not sure what the motivation is though. If he thinks he will get better training, that's not likely to happen at a low level D1 school, and he's not good enough to make a good D1 team.
He would do much better finding a decent D2 or D3 program, and even there, he's not fast enough to be wanted on the very best of those.
Ohio Coach wrote:
Hello,
I currently coach in Southern Ohio. I have a high school athlete who is interested in Xavier. He has run 16:21/4:37/10:01. He's motivated to run D1, but looking at results, we see Xavier is not very good in the big east nor as a team. Do they not take it seriously? Funding? I see they just achieved a new coach, but overall- still no good results after their first track meet. A 9:15 steeple was the most impressive run I saw.
Their new coach is the same guy that turned the UC program around. They should be in good hands...
who is he?
XU has a new coach, so hard to say; but even if it does not turn around, your guy may be a fit a Xavier.
With some improvement your guy could be a top 7 runner and get some opportunity at Xavier.
Same could be said for a host of smaller DI schools in Ohio. Getting in over your head sometimes works out but more often it leads to injury and quitting.
He didn't turn Cincinnati around. Technically they got worse.
His bio highlights leading Cincinnati to 6 top 5 finishes at the AAC cross country championships.....there were only 8 or 9 teams in the league for most of his years.
The bio highlights two runner up finishes....he inherited a strong team and his first 2 years in the AAC they were 2nd. Then he made them WORSE. In 2019 his men finished 4th at the AAC championships behind TEMPLE and CONNECTICUT. In 2018 they were 5th.
It's worth mentioning that his top athlete was a German kid who ran 3:53 and 14:20 before stepping foot on campus.
Their other top guy this year was a transfer from Northern Kentucky who was the Horizon League champ in the 1500 and steeplechase in 2019 (and 5k indoors). PR's of 3:51 and 9:03 in the steeple. He did not run one race with Burroughs as his coach at Cincy.
He will NOT be able to land international athletes and transfers like that at Xavier with their limited resources.
First of all - I would predict Xavier gets better overall in the scheme of D1 in the next few year but the Big East is pretty tough.
If your athlete is in Southern Ohio I would recommend looking at Northern Kentucky University as well if he wants to run D1 that bad. Coach there has had success developing a couple standout athletes over the years and most of the guys they bring in are around your athlete's marks.
If he doesn't want to run at NKU or Xavier I would recommend going D2 or D3. Plenty of options in Ohio for him
time keeper wrote:
Ohio Coach wrote:
Hello,
I currently coach in Southern Ohio. I have a high school athlete who is interested in Xavier. He has run 16:21/4:37/10:01. He's motivated to run D1, but looking at results, we see Xavier is not very good in the big east nor as a team. Do they not take it seriously? Funding? I see they just achieved a new coach, but overall- still no good results after their first track meet. A 9:15 steeple was the most impressive run I saw.
Their new coach is the same guy that turned the UC program around. They should be in good hands...
Unless they decided to officially start putting real funding into the program I doubt too much gets turned around.
As a Xavier grad, I can tell you that the lack of football and all the revenue it generates, X really only has the funds to invest in one sport and it is not cross. Basketball is the only sport to get the level of funding needed to be successful in the Big East (and we are only in the Big East so we can be competitive in the NCAA tourney, this year notwithstanding). Your guy can definitely get the experience of being a D1 athlete at a Nike school, but he will most likely not be on an uber-competitive squad. It is a shame, with all the local high school talent, that we have not been able to field a more competitive squad.
Look at Walsh University
I coached at a very similar university in all ways and here's the deal...this kind of admin DOES NOT GIVE TWO SH!TS about the program. Like a previous poster mentioned, they just don't have the money (or don't want to spend the money) to be good in anything but basketball...certainly not XC/Track. So when you have 1 - 2 scholarships for the men, 2 - 3 scholarships for the women (4 at most), the budget of a DIII school, no full-time assistants and no facility, your job is this: get 5 kids across 6 finish lines per gender in XC & 14 kids across 8 finish lines in track to meet NCAA sport sponsorship minimums so the school gets their $40k/sponsored sport (in this case, it would be $160k for men's and women's xc and track disbursement) and Title IX numbers and then just don't piss anyone off/keep problems off your AD's desk. That's it. Meanwhile the student-athletes will be treated like garbage by everyone from academic advising to the athletic trainers to sports info because it's been made clear from the beginning, from the top, that these athletes, this coach, and the entire program is purposely meant to be trash. So no matter what the coach does, the culture will be sh!t. Not least of which because they have to ask non-DI caliber athletes to compete against real DI athletes. So the athletes will spend their entire time getting their ass kicked, with an over-worked/thinly stretched coach (remember, no full time assistants), for very little to no scholarship, all while being told they're trash by everyone that's supposed to be supporting their "student-athlete experience." Doesn't matter if [insert current hottest name coach in the NCAA here] is coaching...with no money and no support, they'll look like clowns. So this means either the coach makes their peace with it and just puts in minimal effort while treating it like a retirement job, or a motivated coach will get the hell out of there ASAP or just quit the profession altogether when they decided to finally have some self respect.
So basically, if your athlete is a good academic & cultural fit for Xavier (wants to go there regardless of athletics) or just wants to put "DI athlete" on their resume, this can work fine. If they want to enjoy their athletic experience and improve, do not go DI (any DI who would recruit/take someone with those marks is going to offer a similar situation...nothing against your athlete, just speaking truth).
I mean - as far as Ohio schools go - there are few that have proven they can develop kids.
Otterbein
John Carroll
Walsh
Wright State
University of Dayton
Anyone else is on a step below.
Your athlete won't go pro in running, if Xavier is his best academic and social fit then he should go there and enjoy the running as much as is possible in Cincinnati. With those times, running shouldn't be in his top three factors for choosing a school.
Go to John Carroll. Kyle Basista is an elite coach. He has taken multiple 17 flat guys to 15:00 5k guys in a short amount of time. Just had 2 guys go 29:30 and 29:40 in the 10k.
I have a put things I want to address in this post.
I hope your runner is not running with any stress to improve and seek the D1 standards. I understand what this is like and can see it is unhealthy for running.
Next, I would visit the schools, hit the emails and letters to coaches, and actually learn about the teams history/runners. Not even D1, but all divisions. There are D3 freshman runners starting their workouts in 4:37. Look at all the divisions and learn about the the schools. I bet your runner doesn't know that Xavier has no indoor or outdoor track. Also, they probably do not know that the school size is around 5,000 students.
Finally, if they are adamant about going to Xavier, grab a bag of popcorn and sit back enjoy this final part. Xavier is painfully average program in the Big East, you could even say below average. You can see their finishes in cross and track on tfrrs and the results are not comparable to schools like Butler, Georgetown, Villanova in the Big East. The current situation at Xavier would be classified as rebuilding. They have a new coach who came from the U of Cincinnati, which is 3 miles down the road with a very sound distance squad right now. The coach left U of Cincinnati to take a better position at Xavier, leaving a lot of young men who were gearing up for a massive 2021- go look at tfrrs. 2 sub 14 5k runners, at least 8 sub 8:30 3k guys and 8 guys who can go 4:15 in the mile or faster. That is what the new Xavier coach left for Xavier. Two weeks after the coach left Cinncinati, 5 guys went sub 8:25 in Kentucky. It might be the new coach transition with the current Xavier roster of runners or the lack of resources within their program. The new coach did coach at Cincinnati for a long time, but when it comes down to facts, runners are getting faster through better training, shoes, and nutrition. When you have several sub 8:50 3200 meter runners training with others seeking that goal, the goal becomes easier to reach when you have people who are pushing others. This is not happening at Xavier, there is not one single sub 14:30 runner in the 5k, sub 8:30 in the 3k or sub 4:10 in the mile.
I would have your runner look at all the schools, find a place that works for him and email the hell out of the coach. Who knows? if your runner wants to go to Ohio State and run he should pursue that just as much as Xavier.
4 Xavier men and 4 Xavier women are on the transfer portal now that the new coach started, including some of their top runners. They aren't following the old coach because he got out of the profession. Appears to be an issue with Burroughs.
Don't jump onto a sinking ship.