Why are recruiting standards times faster compared to TFRRS top performances for the same school?

Those all but a few are the ones on scholarship.

It seems college coaches often times overrate what they think they can get for recruits.

The published recruiting standards are a filter.

because they are trying to replace slower people with faster people

Sooooo much this!!!!! Yea if your recruiting standard is 1415 5k that is because you know you can get as many not 1415 kids as you want… coaches many programs need more fast kids not just more kids.

Often, published recruiting standards are wishful thinking / trying to sound impressive. Only believe the posted times for the schools that are at XC nationals every year or nearly every year, and are well represented at track nats every year.

I get why it's annoying as hell. But the posts about the team trying to get faster are right on the money. If you can't score at conference and ultimately score big, a lot of coaches don't want to bother. It's easier to have a smaller team. And with dual meets not a thing anymore, the only thing they care about is likely regional or national qualifiers as well as conference scoring. Well add in top 10 lists and school records so they can look good for the AD.

Its moronic for mid majors though. If youre not getting top tier recruits, your best shot is rolling the dice with as many undertrained low end guys as possible.

spend your scholarship money on a couple of fulls and then stock up on infinite lottery tickets. Teams lose out on free conference points bc their coaches want to pretend their team is better than it is. How much effort does it take to run 15 9:30 hs guys through the gauntlet? If 2 of them break through, youve got free contributors

at the end of the day, its coaches trying to cut corners and raise their programs status without actually developing anyone

This is how most programs should operate. I ran for a school that regularly qualifies for D1 XC nationals. Most of the top recruits in my class flamed out or transferred. The one dude who ended up being an all-american was a 4:30 high school miler who walked on.

Here is what happens/happened at the college I went to:

- Coach can't develop anyone to run faster.

- Coach tries to recruit the fastest in the state to make up for lack of know-how. Plenty of lies about coaching abilities, taking them to faster meets, and how "if only (coach) had hard workers on the team."

- Coach misses fast recruits 99% of the time, never has a solid recruiting class, and the 1% of fast runners he does get ends up quitting/transferring after the first year because they realize coach is full of it.

- Repeat.

These coaches who have been in the game for 5+ years and have no evidence of developing athletes still think they are hot stuff. I just feel bad for the few athletes who fall for it. These coaches will always be "in the development/building stages" and "just looking for a few fast recruits to take us to the next level." The proper approach should be developing the athletes you already have, then you can keep recruiting faster and faster runners as your runners get faster. But that requires effort and learning.

Did I just explain most of the coaches with fast recruiting standards and no fast athletes?

Admission standards for colleges are the same way. If everyone who attends has a HS GPA over a 3.5 and 1400 on their SAT, why is anyone getting below an A- in their classes in college? In general, it's a filter. College coaches can easily get 100's of interested recruits every season. It almost becomes a full time job trying to respond. By putting it out there, they are hoping only those who feel they can achieve those marks will actually make the effort to reach out. If you have a strong interest in a school, and feel you can contribute to the team, then by all means give it a shot.

I would also compare the recruiting standards to the times the recruits ran in HS not TFRRS (these are easily accessible on Milesplit) to get a true understanding of what kinds of athletes a school is landing. Just because a runner as a 4:10/9:00 guy in HS does not mean it's going to translate to College. People get hurt, their body physiology changes, they lose their passion for the sport, they meet a girl, or their priorities change and their college marks reflect that. If a College says they only want sub 4:20 runners and every one of their recruits was over that, then you have a pretty good idea of the kind of runners they are landing.

Even with high standards college coaches get bombarded with interested high school athletes. If they lowered the standards they would get bombarded even more.

Consider that most coaches are doing their own "scouting" by going through milesplit and athletic.net, which means that they're probably reaching out to the people they know fit their recruiting profile in terms of performance level. By setting these posted standards high, that sets it up so that anybody who hasn't been contacted by the coach is recruitable if they choose to reach out on their own.

Separately, depending on the event (pole vault for instance), some schools don't place much stock in their ability to recruit and develop the event relative to their level of competition. So if I need a 16 foot pole vaulter to score in my conference, then maybe all I have are walk-ons who vault 14'0. And if a 16 footer decides he wants to come to school here, then I know he's worth the money.

It's the entry level position requiring 3 years of experience equivalent in the running world.

is this the same for d3/ivies? because they don't offer any scholarships

My school was like that. At the home invitationals they would set incredible standards of like 3:39 1500, 13:40 5k, and 8:30 steeple. Then the home meets would just be us jogging 14:30 because nobody on the team was close to those times and we rejected anyone slower than those times. We always had a good laugh.

Because there is no time for development and to obviously weed out the kids who just want to be in a name sake program. The number 1 reason though, you have to be able to make an immediate impact and there is too much pressure to win to find time to develop. Microwave coaches, want microwave kids.

Same reason a lot of women on Tinder will only match with guys that are 6'5" and up; they get plenty of shorter guys hitting on them irl. They are swinging for the fences on Tinder.