HS Coaches: What does your typical "recruiting class" look like

Whichever CA teams are at the top will pull in at times 5 to 10 guys under 5:20.

That seems about right. My "record" for fastest incoming middle schooler is 5:07

I never met our incoming freshmen until late August at the earliest. In some schools I never had freshmen until mid September. Unfortunately this is the way it is for most NYC public schools.

We don't start classes until after labor day. We'll have a meeting, hope kids show up, give out medical forms and hope that their Drs will fill them out quickly.

You don't have access to their middle school times?

Our best group was 5 years ago with 2 under 4:50 and 2 more under 5:00. They finished 2nd at state last year.

Very few ran in middle school. The mid distance kids who ran in middle school come from a few neighborhoods and end up at a few schools. Very few Bronx or Queens kids participate in middle school track, the one who are in clubs tend to be sprinters. Brooklyn and Staten Island have a few very good club programs which prepare middle distance runners and send these kids to the better academic achools.

It was largely the same for me in tiny, rural central CA until our school started a day where all of the 8th graders from all of our feeder schools got to come on campus and learn about clubs and sports (among other things).

this has helped my identify potential runners and get info to them about our summer practices. It still doesn’t address the problem of there really being no development system in our area.

ideas. Wow, 2 under 4:50 and 2 more under 5:00. That’s a great group. Those are the types of times people throw out about programs like NP. Do you mind me asking which state?

What are you talking about? There's tons of youth clubs in NYC. It's the deepest youth track area besides southern California. My kids have been competing against the NYC youth clubs for years. If you can win in NYC you're pretty much an All-American at any Junior Olympics.

Sounds like the situation in Philadelphia. Parochial schools get most of their runners from the CYO programs and in the surrounding suburbs, they have actual middle school programs. The inner city has a few schools with a program called Students Run, which tries to get kids out running a half-marathon with maybe 2 days a week of running. It's not a very serious program. That said, those kids tend to only attend 2 or maybe 3 high schools. If I meet anyone in August, it's a miracle, and often they don't come out until October when the season has only 3 weeks left. Then there's the fact that we have a serious violent crime/gun problem that some parents don't want their kid running due to having almost no place to train.

Illinois. A typical year has two guys sub 5 minutes and another few under 5:20. My own son ran 4:40 in 8th grade which is the 2nd best ever in our district.

In 20 years only had 3 boys run under 6 before Freshmen year. Would typically get 2-3 each year in the 6:15-6:30 range then 2-3 at about 7:00. Based on school location was not allowed to talk to middle school kids until they registered for HS at my school. Made it pretty hard to compete in my state in the largest division. Did ok, looking back could have done better.

Not to get all "back in my day" but with two or three notable exceptions, nearly all of the successful distance kids in my HS cohort (Texas, mid-to-late 2000s) were cast-offs from other sports who came into running by accident as high school freshmen.

Is it really a necessity nowadays to have a class of already-somewhat-trained incoming high schoolers in order to be competitive down the road? Genuinely curious if the youth sport specialization you hear about so much in basketball, baseball, soccer, etc., has finally made its way to track/cross country.

That doesn't make sense unless your school has 25 kids in a class. We have 10 every year. Our JH girls' team has way more sub 6 than that. I think they went 5:30, 5:45, 5:50 this year.

I’ve got 11 incoming 9th grade girls that I know of coming in so far. I’ll take it. Some have run before too so it’s a strong group. Many are actually training over the summer too.

This is my experience too. A good year for us is getting double digit numbers out for our freshmen class. In a great year those freshmen show up to summer running and average 4-5 days of running per week. There is a not a serious club or middle school running scene in our community.

I come from a place where football is king. We have a 8th grade boy who ran 24.6/55.0/2:09/4:40 in track and 10:40 while beating all comers for 2 miles in XC. He also pole vaulted 11-06 for good measure. He’s playing football next fall. His classmate ran 25.0 for 200, 57.lo for 400 and easily broke 12 minutes in XC. Also playing football. Thankfully the two other boys in that grade who ran mid-11s for XC are running. We are a rural, public school with about 50-60 kids per grade. Needless to say, our MS XC boys blasted all competition last fall and all throughout the Spring. Too bad they don’t care much about running.

Not totally in the vein of the thread but I work at a regional high school and the runners come in "waves" from different towns on different years. I'd say what usually happens is there's one good guy who gets along with his middle school coach and they are able to encourage other kids in their grade to join. Most memorable to me was that out of the best varsity group I ever had, 5 out of 7 guys were from the same grade and same subsection of one of the five towns that fed the high school.

For me, this is still largely the case. My 800m state champion had never run competitively before HS. My girl who was #8 U.S. for 3200m and 3rd at USAJ had never run before HS (however, I didn't start coaching her until 11th grade). My school record holder boy for 3200 had never even done a sport before HS, and one of my girls who went on to set the 800m record at a "mid major d1" had never run cross until she was cut from the varsity volleyball team as an 11th grader (she had run hurdles and dabbled with the 400 and 800 for her first 2 years of track, however). All of these kids were massively talented, however.

As I said earlier, I coach in an area where there is very little in the way of youth development, but there are a couple of programs that feed into nearby high schools. I've really noticed a difference in one of the local schools, as they've started getting some talented, fairly well developed boys and are now a threat to make NXN. (Their coach is excellent, so I'm not saying the only reason they are good now is that they're getting kids who have competitive running under their belts). Also, when I see lists of incoming athletes who've already broken 5:00 or 10:30 and are now headed to programs that we all know are good...... I must say, I get a bit jealous.

this is in Illinois again, but there was an article in the Trib talking about the experience of runners like Brooke Johnston, LZ high school, who participated in middle school feeder programs. I grew up in the Chicagoland area, but didn't have such an opportunity decades ago (I attended a small school without middle school track or XC) so I just started the first week of high school.

Side story: my niece is a part of large suburban middle school, my jaw about dropped to the ground when my sister told me 200 kids signed up for middle school track at her school. 3 coaches only, too. the kicker is, her school isn't even the "powerhouse" program in her town, there's actually another middle school across town (same district) that has a very strong track program, both boys and girls. Those kids will start high school with a very strong foundation for track/XC. which is a huge advantage.

chicagotribune.com

Middle school experience of runners like Lake Zurich’s Brooke Johnston indicative of ‘incredible feeder programs’ in Chicago area

Cross country coaches have more ways than ever to encourage lifelong running, prepare kids for the high school level and find out who could be coming to the program in the near future.

Link:www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-zu...