College coaches who hold a time trial, how far has a non recruit walk on from the time trial gone?

It is really frustrating to have Coaches who won't return a call or email of a runner who wants to try to walk on or see what they need to do to obtain a chance.

In the old book Running with the Buffalos some of the runners were former walk-ons. I believe one of the top 5 from that season had been (Friedberg) and the author talks about others from previous years who went from walk-on to All American.

We had a walk on time trial my freshman year. The guy who won it was an international student who ran 15:12 that day for 5000. The standard to get on the team was supposed to be 15:00 which was a little dumb because we definitely had freshmen on the team that couldn't run 15:12 the first week of cross country season, let alone sub-15. The coaching staff let the guy on the team. He was top 5 on our XC team by sophomore year and ended up being second team all-west region. He also ran 14:03 on the track. The rest of our freshman class (all recruited) that included a 4:08 HS miler and a Foot locker finalist failed to even stay on the team all four years.

There was also a walk-on who was a year older than me that ended up running 14:2x and 29:2x on the track and made our XC top seven for three years.

I had a walk-on teammate get 41st at NCAAs. Wasn't fast in high school but was a very hard worker.

There's a difference between someone who was recruited to be a walk-on, and someone who was not really given any attention or any spot on the team and later earned a spot through a tryout or similar thing (running on club team and getting faster)

One example I can think of is Michael VanVoorhis in 2013-2015 who didn't make it on the team at Wisconsin, but ran on the club team. Ended up running near 14:10 while on the club team and got a spot on the regular team. Went on to finish top 3 at Big Ten Championships a couple times, running around 29 flat for 10k, and around 13:50 for 5k.

So he went from not being on the team and just a regular student at Wisconsin competing for the run club, to being first team all big ten and running at NCAA championships

His HS PRs of 4:23/9:44 indicate he was undertrained in HS so he is only a comp for walk-ons who were also undertrained.

I kniw a guy who was in the 10k at nationals last week who was an unrecruited walk on.

Here's a good article on his experience walking on at Wisconsin. Even after he got on the team, he almost got booted off. "In the beginning he was difficult to coach, and I can honestly say a couple of times I got in his face and came very close to kicking him off the team."

Central grad Michael Van Voorhis: Former walk-on now Badgers front-runner