I know school are up and down, but come on, man. It's no wonder I still have all the records, and I set them BEFORE the last LA Olympics.
How many kids in each class and how many on the team? Bad coaching, maybe, but usually it’s just the law of averages.
This brings up an interesting point. With historical data it should be fairly predictable the likelihood that there one or more runners of a certain quality in a school (barring recruiting). You can then decide if the team and coaches are over or under performing over time in terms of internal recruiting and coaching up the talent you have. In any given year or two, things can be horrible or phenomenally good, and it’s not really anything but luck, good or bad. For example your old team now vs Gary Martin’s HS team last year.
700 enrollment, that's just a bit lower than when I was there.
The school has dropped a class in recent years, as in D1 to D2. Demographics are hitting it somewhat, it appears. (Lower Midwestern state.) The teams look like 10-15 boys, 8-10 girls. That's the same it was in the early-80s, but lower than it was in the 90s and 00s.
They had a mid-16 kid a year or two back, who would up at an area NAIA-level school
Do they even train at all or is it simply show up on race day and nothing else? A school with 5 boys in it should have someone faster than 21 minutes with just running 15 miles a week.
I know school are up and down, but come on, man. It's no wonder I still have all the records, and I set them BEFORE the last LA Olympics.
Seems that, in HS running nowadays, it's becoming a feast or famine situation. With the current "open enrollment" most school districts allow, running talent will gravitate towards established programs, even if it means a longish commute, leaving other programs with not a lot to work with.
Our local HS has 5 boys (top runner just broke the 21 minute barrier). The girls have about 8 runners and the top 5 average around 26 minutes. If the coaches are not teachers they are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to recruiting.
They did have a summer mileage program with daily runs of anywhere between 1.5 and 3 miles 5 days a week. Ugh.
700 enrollment, that's just a bit lower than when I was there.
The school has dropped a class in recent years, as in D1 to D2. Demographics are hitting it somewhat, it appears. (Lower Midwestern state.) The teams look like 10-15 boys, 8-10 girls. That's the same it was in the early-80s, but lower than it was in the 90s and 00s.
They had a mid-16 kid a year or two back, who would up at an area NAIA-level school
700 total enrollment? That’s a small school. Regardless, 10-15 boys and 8-10 girls are tiny teams. My children graduated from a small school (total enrollment 530) and the xc team has 75 runners (60% boys). There are a disproportionate number of underclass men who drop off by junior or senior year, but these numbers still allow for decent access to the talent pool. With this talent pool we have a consistent few boys running low 16s and a full varsity squad at least at 18 min or better, often better. Once in a while we pop a “phenom.” We just sent a 14:50s xc kid to D1. Seems like the problem is a serious lack of internal recruiting/interest in running at your alma mater.
My old HS has about 400 enrollment and I think this is the first year they've had enough kids to have a full scoring team (5). Since the old coach left about 8 years ago times have been tough. All of our records in track and XC are from the former coach's tenure.
There are enormous numbers of programs like this. People on this website have no sense of perspective at all. NP is called typical in how they improve their athletes; they just get better athletes supposedly. But if you look at the results for any invitational, you'll see the vast # of athletes on any given program within a narrow range. Some programs will have some kids way ahead because they train for a club or with their parents, and maybe a few even have "talent" but at programs like Kiler's the coaches probably know very little and they are just hoping to be able to have a scoring team and so are afraid to have significant miles lest most of the athletes quit. My daughter would be third on her high school team even on the rare times she runs in between workouts for other sports, and they don't have enough to field a scoring team this year. With the loss of a coach, the boys dropped back minutes from last year's relatively good team of 18 and 19 minute guys, and several individuals quit. But if you can get athletes to buy in to a program, do regular summer runs, and get their mileage up into the 20s, there's no reason not to get boys under 18 minutes and girls under 21-22 in your first season of xc at a school.
Doesn't matter. A decent coach can turn pretty mediocre talent into an 18 minute 5ker.
Literally just consistently running 5-6 days a week can take a mediocre talent down to 18 minutes.
This board again proves it has no perspective on what normal talent is. My son’s team has shown up in national discussions and is expected to win state. My point is that the coaches know what they are doing.
Only a quarter of the team has broken 18 so far and only half have broken 20.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the majority of HS boys won’t ever break 18 despite running 5-6 days a week with better coaching than just going out and running.
I thought my team was average compared to other teams, but we’d probably average 17:00 in good years and 17:45-18:00 in bad years.
Not having one male below 21 is horrible. To be honest, I don’t even know how that’s possible. If you run 25 mpw and race often, you’ll be in sub 21 shape easily.
At age 10 I ran my first 5K in 24 minutes with ZERO training.
At 14 with even with NO TRAINING there should be kids running 21 minutes for the 5K with basically zero miles of training per week.
Once again...impossible. I am assuming troll.
I can't reveal the school or I'd reveal who I am, obviously.
The coach is the same as the last few years. I'm a thousand miles away, I really don't know more. But they've run four meets so far, and this 21-minute kid is it. They're regularly scoring over 200 points per meet. Definitely a famine year.