HS clubs that parallel the school teams?

What are your states rules and regulations regarding clubs, HS coaches' interactions with athletes during winter and summer, etc? Some states have very strict restrictions; others have nearly none at all.

Yes, this is true with a lot of states.

In my state we can coach over the summer as long as we don’t make it mandatory. Many States can not.

We are not permitted to coach out of season during the school year. We also can not talk to a middle school athlete about our program for recruiting reasons.

Our club is USATF. Start here

usatf.org

USA Track & Field | Club/Organization Membership

Link:www.usatf.org/home/top-utility-nav-con...

We have XC and summer track seasons for all ages 8-18 and typically run USATF events plus other smaller events put on by local clubs. We have an indoor winter training/fitness session that is low-key conditioning for elementary and middle school runners. 2 nights a week for 90 minutes. During this time, our HS runners have their own program but are often around to drop in to help out.

XC follows middle school season but runs in parallel with the championship season for HS. So we have a good number of middle school and JV high school runners. 2-3 days a week for 2 hours after school with instructions for other training days when we do not meet.

Our HS coaches do not coach directly for the club, but they promote it, support it, and we generally all follow same routines for warmups, drills, etc.

I would say if you can attract from multiple high schools or districts, the do it. The more the merrier, and a single HS might be a challenge to get enough interest to gather inertia at the beginning.

Before the club formed, we also had an informal group of summer distance runners - middle and high school. A few coaches would organize one morning a week throughout summer.

We run our Summer and Winter offseason training through a USATF club. It gives us continuity in our training.

The level of competitiveness at the high school level is very weak for club teams. For example, during XC season Club teams that typically make the national meet would not be competitive within their own state.

Also, there are many invitationals and track events that would accept a non-school team. So currently, it would not be accurate to say the club teams parallel school teams.

This can certainly change at some point.

Back in "70 when I was ass't track coach at Fremont High in Sunnyvale, CA, we had an extraordinary young woman in school who trained and competed w a local club but was not available for league competition. She would show up for some training sessions to run with my best xc and track guy on the track (he won league, section, and Division 2 mi. I never figured it out but somewhere along the trail Francie seems to have had a falling out with the San Jose girls track club. Don't recall details of that Imbroglio but she went on to compete in several olympics and earned some reknown. I would have been a little bitter about that "club" business then but the rules of the game were not clear to me as to memberships in clubs and participation in official school track. And she was the nicest kid around! I couldn't help worrying she was being managed improperly and was not getting the most out of her school experience. Too many adult 😪 "guidance counsellors!"