Great strategy, tell the kids to go away and maybe next year you will be worthy and be allowed to exercise on school grounds and make friends. A genius approach to a healthy student population.
No one's stopping anyone from exercising. Stop being a crybaby.
Most kids are out there to improve themselves. Some show up for practice one or two days a week so that they can put "Ran four years of XC and track" on their college applications. If you have enough coaches, then cuts are not necessary. The problem is that you start burning through assistants that get frustrated and quit because they are doing more babysitting than coaching.
I know one coach who often gets trashed on this site for having to cut his track roster to 300 athletes, because he was told he had to change how he did his fundraising and it simply took to much time. Coaching is only supposed to be a part-time gig and he was putting WAY more time into the team with practices, planning practices, being on the phone with meet directors, fundraising he was already doing for his team, running all-comers meets as fundraisers for his team, planning off-season programs and camps, etc. He had to choose to cut his roster to 300 and there was no way around it. Such a horrible man.
My daughter was cut from the track team in 10th grade. But they allowed some slower basketball girls to stay on the team because there coach wanted to keep them in shape.
She never ran again.
I didn't run track until 11th grade but got good the next year, walked onto a good college program, earned a scholarship and eventually ran in the Olympic Trials.
I may have never tried again if I was cut in 10th grade like my daughter.
The solution is more sports teams, not larger teams. This will of course require $$$$. But implementing sports like crew, hockey, etc. is a better idea than having a 120 man treack team anyways.
Yea bro let's have a varsity, jv, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, and j team for basketball. Having 10 teams makes so much sense just so no ones feelings get hurt.
Do we cut kids from Algebra because there isn't space for them? We in the USA have an obesity crisis yet we have cuts and even some schools without gym classes or playgrounds. Some of these kids will be heart diseased and diabetic in a few decades if we don't change course. I realize that equipping some teams (e.g., American football) can be very expensive, but some sports such as running or soccer need much less money.
I don't know what's worse. Kids who can figure everything out on a phone, master video games, get in etc. of which are all mostly a waste of time and can create unnecessary drama and yes can ultimately create a situation where they are FAT, diabetes, etc......or.... hearing you blame others including coaches, school administration, etc. for creating an obesity epidemic and not their parents. Nice try.
How about you advertise students spend 10-25% of the time they waste exercising and they prevent YOUR obesity epidemic? Never mind people are to stupid to realize this.
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
My daughter was cut from the track team in 10th grade. But they allowed some slower basketball girls to stay on the team because there coach wanted to keep them in shape.
She never ran again.
I didn't run track until 11th grade but got good the next year, walked onto a good college program, earned a scholarship and eventually ran in the Olympic Trials.
I may have never tried again if I was cut in 10th grade like my daughter.
If this really happened, this sounds like a good 'ole article for the local media. Something like this happened in our district and some district administration was reassigned.
The solution IMO is more PE classes and other opportunities like rec leagues, clubs and pickup games etc for kids to participate and compete within the school. Interscholastic Sports should be reserved for the best athletes at given school to compete against the best at other schools, that is literally their purpose.
Look at it this way: boys who can run a mile in 6:00 or slower don’t need to compete against boys from other schools, there is probably already plenty of competition for them within their own school, a PE class or a club is probably fine for them. A boy who can run a mile in 4:30 or faster might not have another kid at their own school to provide meaningful competition at which point it makes sense to look outside the school for more competition. The same is true for every sport, the best athletes in each sport are going to have to look elsewhere for competition, they’ve already proven they are better than everyone else at their own school via tryouts etc. The problem isn’t varsity sports making cuts, the problem is the lack of other outlets for all the other kids who don’t make the cut.
Or they could just expand the teams and only take the top kids to the travel competitions. There is no reason they can't have 100 kids on any team other than laziness, arrogance and more laziness. Why shouldn't a kid who runs 6 minutes be able to compete? American HS is such a dog and pony show. The gain from school athletics is the exercise, being part of a team effort, and the social interaction, not selecting the "best" at the expense of everyone else; the competition is actually meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Real coaches would and do push for huge roster as it allows for depth and development and the emergence of real stars, not the declaration of "you are a star" because some kids grew first. Some of the top teams in the nation have historically had giant rosters. Excluding kids from their school teams teaches them nothing. Yes, most schools could certainly afford and handle a 40-50 basketball team roster if they actually cared about the students; sadly, they don't actually care about the students and that is the primary problem.
How would you hold Basketball practice for 100 or 200 kids?
The solution is more sports teams, not larger teams. This will of course require $. But implementing sports like crew, hockey, etc. is a better idea than having a 120 man treack team anyways.
The future is non school based athletics. Almost all sports even today are simply "contested" by a group of kids that go to the same school. They might do their training (except maybe in season) on multiple different club teams. Example 1 is swimming. No HS swimmer of any note practices primarily with the HS coach. Most don't practice at all with a HS coach. Even track is this way. Basketball is heavily AAU centric. Lax is year round and is dominated by club team players.
So, anyway, HS sports is becoming a side show and its probably a good thing. But for sure, a massive expansion is not happening.
You sound like a terrible parent. You have that level of ability but didn't get your daughter into running? Switch schools. Or get her onto a club team. You blew it. You raised a quitter.
Students in my town get cut from the science Olympiad team. They’re free to continue going to school to learn about science, just as the kids that don’t make the basketball team are free to shoot hoops somewhere after school. I’ve never heard of kids getting cut from HS xc team. I think someone just made that up! The golf course holds so many and interest in distance running isn’t overwhelming. If they mean “didn’t get to ride the bus to the conference meet,” sure. But not allowed to practice and run in a home dual meet? I don’t buy it.
The problem with cuts is that they often cut players who could become good players by the time they are seniors.
I have seen many kids who get cut or don't get playing time because they haven't matured as quickly as some classmates. Conversely, I have seen the biggest, strongest kid in the 9th grade class get all the playing time, but they stopped maturing and were only average size by the time they were a senior.
It is like the Freakonomics study where the youth hockey players were all born in January or Feb. because they only chose the players who had matured faster.
The solution is to stop predestining teams at such a young age, let all the students play as much as they want and give them all opportunities to be helped by coaches. It doesn't have to be everyday practices, just have someone to help them grow athletically. By the time they are juniors and seniors, they could have much better teams than the old way of designating a few who will become the varsity in four years.
Students in my town get cut from the science Olympiad team. They’re free to continue going to school to learn about science, just as the kids that don’t make the basketball team are free to shoot hoops somewhere after school. I’ve never heard of kids getting cut from HS xc team. I think someone just made that up! The golf course holds so many and interest in distance running isn’t overwhelming. If they mean “didn’t get to ride the bus to the conference meet,” sure. But not allowed to practice and run in a home dual meet? I don’t buy it.
The XC team cuts are often at the upper levels of big schools, where juniors or seniors are the ones being cut. The idea is that if by that age a runner hasn't advanced far enough to be a solid contributor to the team, at least in practices, there is no reason for the coaches to continue working with that runner.
My school makes cuts in XC. The number is around 75 boys and 75 girls. How do you propose managing 75 runners doing a long run when some run 6 minue pace amd some run 9 minute pace? Sending 75 girls out into the community in shorts and tanktops with only 2 coaches to monitor them is not a good situation.
No way that HS sports like Football, basketball, baseball or soccer are going to take 10s or even 100s of extra "participant athletes" on their team. These are sports where "participation" level inclusion ends at HS age and to continue on without a high level of skill or athleticism isn't feasible. "Everybody gets to play and everyone gets a trophy" ends in HS if not Middle school! These participant level athletes can start clubs, move on to other sports where there aren't cuts, or move onto sports that aren't school based or are individual sports. HS varsity team rosters should reflect the very best athletes that a school can field, period. This topic shouldn't affect HS distance runners or any "concerned" LRC faux victims....HS XC teams are usually loaded with "participation athletes" who get to "workout" with the actual athletes.
Oversized schools. The HS my girls will be attending had 65 girls try out for the Freshman soccer team this past fall. For sports like xc or track I can see having a larger roster size with kids that just do the home meet but for some sports it's just unmanageable
My local high school (Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley) has over 4,500 kids (I didn't go there but its the local school for my kids). There would be no way to avoid cuts with that kind of student population. So in this case, yes, it's a matter of school size.
Track isn’t so dominated by clubs here but other sports for sure. Lax, soccer and probably swim. AAU basketball is big here but there is something to be said for just being athletic. Our high school won the state basketball tournament last year and we maybe had two AAU players. The rest played other sports primarily. Baseball, golf, track and soccer. Several of those kids will be competing in those sports in college.
Club and AAU is pretty pricey. Putting it out of reach for many families. Lots of kids develop late and there is no place for them to go and learn. One of my kids was growing so quickly that it was awhile before he got used to his long limbs. He ended up being 6’5” but there was no place for him to start. I have a daughter in a similar spot. Just getting puberty, 14 and almost 5’9” but she is getting used to this new body.
You are free to donate to every school in the country so that they can hire more staff and build more fields amd gyms.
People in the US already "donate" to public schools. These people are called taxpayers.
Cuts for travel squads make sense from a financial viewpoint. But there's no reason you can't allow anyone who wants to play onto the "practice" squad that doesn't travel. Telling a potential athlete they can't play because of an arbitrary standard is idiotic. You could be cutting your next all-star.
There is not a simple single solution and it also varies by sport.
XC and track often are not "cut" sports. Team sports often are in part because you have either state association rules or budget limits. It takes money for those football pads. Also at some point you have kids who just are not going to get reps or help because you have too many and not enough coaches. Hiring more coaches can be tough as the pay is often not great.
If that kid is one of 30 showing up every day at basketball practice, the coaches are going to spend the time with the 7 or 8 who are going to help them win. Heck even the 12th guy on the basketball is not doing much. So how good of an experience is that? I was the 12th guy on my basketball team my junior year. I did not play my senior year. It was not like I was going to jump up the pecking order as 4/5 starters were also juniors.
As for the exercise component, not playing high school sports is not an excuse for not being active. One can still run (or even walk), ride a bike, lift weights, etc. It is also not the only way to make friends.
One thing is more community based sports programs that offer recreational opportunities for kids who want to play but do not want the competitiveness of varsity sports. Another situation is for kids who come to a sport late or just do not have the experience/skills yet to make varsity (or maybe even JV).
Also, big schools are more likely to have the cut problem and also run into more early specialization for that reason. At a smaller school your best athletes likely can play multiple sports (and there are a lot of benefits to that).
I have never understood this. Particularly now where rates of teen depression and suicide in the US are on the rise and it is well proven that participation in school sports reduces rates of depression and suicide. It seems like Americans want to kill off the kids who don't quite cut it at the age of 15; usually it is a size things for dumb Americans as well. I understand it can be a budget thing, but not really. It really would not cost that much to expand roster sizes at schools in order to encourage as much participation and the best student health outcomes possible. Americans and American athletes seem crazy and and delusionally focused on elitism and winning at the expense of the health and lives of many of the students. No wonder Americans are so skittish and crazy. WHy do they do this to themselves?
SMH...Only entitled little brats think they all have a spot on a team.
Who wants 25 guys on a basketball team or 50 on a baseball or soccer team.
They aren't good enough....get over it. You were cut because you suck.