tobeahighschooler wrote:
Also earlier in the thread people were remarking on how good, but small the Newbury Park team is, and I gotta say, it seems like Brosnan and NBP is great is you're super dedicated to running and are willing to spend hours per day doing it and going to summer camps, and basically training like a pro. But the flipside of that is, the reason there's only like 16 guys on the team who aren't freshman is because most kids don't want to do that in high school, I mean heck, I enjoy running quite a lot but probably would've been turned off by that if that was what I encountered in high school. Obviously for the kids who stick with it, it makes them fast, but I have to think there's a good amount of kids out there and who experience running and enjoy being on the team, and maybe not break 4:30 or even 5 in the mile, but still have fun, and I feel like that's what high school teams should be about, sure encourage the more motivated guys to do high mileage and care, but also let some kids just fool around and run like 30 mpw and have fun.
I have a lot of sympathy for this position, and it makes me wonder if high school distance running would be better off if "club teams" existed, as they do in high school swimming. Then, the kids who want to train 12 months a year with Brosnan could join his club team, and the other kids who are either unwilling or unable to run 70+ miles a week and go to a month-long summer camp could stick with the school team.
I know that in high school swimming there can be big conflicts between the club programs and the school programs, but perhaps US high school distance running has now reached the point at which high-powered club teams need to be considered as a viable option to the school team. Isn't that how it works in the rest of the world?