Should slow kids be kicked of high school cross country teams ?

GTFO with your poverty mindset. You're doing something seriously wrong if the cost of a couple dozen extra uniforms and a school bus to some nearby meets means that you can't also spend money on the faster kids.

No I’m a fast high schooler but sometimes I wonder if the school invested on us more

No. The point of high schools overall, including their athletic programs, is to provide educational opportunities for students. Slow kids can still benefit physically, emotionally, and socially from involvement in a school sport.

Schools aren't private sector businesses with free rein to cut spending wherever they feel it makes sense in support of an almighty balance sheet. Of course there are limits to how much money a school has and what they're able to spend it on, but kicking slow kids off of a sports team just to save some money is incongruous with the mission of educational institutions.

Troll thread is troll thread. But even so, being an adolescent is a very hard time for virtually all young people. Being a part of a team with other like minded young people pursuing a healthy pastime that provides a whole host of benefits can be a pivotal experience for the kids. What a cruel joke to float a troll thread out there playing at taking that opportunity away from young people. The relatively low expense of maximizing how many kids can participate versus the high value of the benefits they get from the experience makes it well worth the cost.

It depends. What is the team size? Why are they slow? How slow are they relative to the rest of the team?

In general, I would say no one should be kicked off a hs xc team, but if an athlete is slow because he or she walks in practice, doesn't run over the summer, ignores coaching direction, etc. then maybe the coach should encourage that kid to find an activity better suited to his or her interests. If an athlete comes onto the team slow, ie with no physical fitness or athletic background, well maybe he or she won't contribute, but in hs its generally a positive to help any young person improve.

Now there are cases where the team is already very big or is capped (possibly so other teams can have a large enough roster) and cuts may be warranted. Although its pretty easy to coach a large group, just individualize workouts for the very fast and very slow.

I like Malcom Gladwell's idea of scoring cross-country using the top 20, not top 5.

It's not clear to me what the school actually pays for each one. I ran HS XC (waste of time- didn't last until Senior year) and they loaned you a uniform. Not GAVE. LOANED. Had to give it back. It wasn't created that year just for me or you. It was already in a box somewhere long before I got there. I don't see how more of those being used increases the cost of them being made years ago.

Now the bus situation. My school didn't fund a bus to anywhere far. If there had been a State Meet when I was around I don't believe they would have paid anything for that. Those who could afford to get there somehow may have gone. I don't know if going on your own without the school's participation breaks any State rule or not.

But the district most certainly wasn't paying for hotel rooms or food. Least of all shoes. Or anything other than a bus - if it was <100 miles. Don't see how a full bus costs more than one with 10 or 20 on it. The coach is paid a fixed amount too.

For some reason, after reading that I feel like schools should spend that extra money teaching readin' & writin'.

1. All students should be welcomed provided they can follow all team rules/expectations regardless of ability.

2. Travel to away meets may be limited because of funding depending on how big a team is. Make arrangements for rotating the back half of the team, JV/9-10 to allow more people opportunities and schedule more home meets for those kids.

3. No meets on weeknights if you are concerned about academics. Otherwise, the kids have to meet all academic guidelines/responsibilities according to school/state regulations. Parents can be of some help here too. Too bad if you can't get them on board through parent meeting to explain their important role and areas they can get involved in the program.

I've had the fastest and slowest kid in the state on my team. Slowest was debatable but I wouldn't bet against him. Only requirement is that he, and others in his category, had to run 5k without stopping to travel. They also had to prove daily that they had a good attitude and was working toward improvement. Assistant coach would monitor it on the track the day before the meet. It usually took the slowest a couple weeks to get there but if they are motivated, they'll make it. 2 bus loads of kids sounds like a lot of fun and they want to be a part of it. Now I started with 13 and grew it to 75 in a few years so my perspective was a little different but I never wanted to put any kid out there that wasn't ready, confident and healthy. Doesn't do anybody any good otherwise. And definitely not just taking kids along for a free ride. I don't need timers, cheerleaders, circus clowns etc... Earn your keep.

Some people put a time limit out there but that's irrelevant to running the whole way. If they walk in a meet, they sit out a meet. Might have to coach them up as to how to get out of the way of other runners in some situations and be ready to tell meet officials not to wait. If they put a 30 min limit on timing then make sure your own kid gets a time or can time himself.

Never had to kick a kid off the team. They just self eliminate either by not complying with team rules/expectations or they just lost interest and quit. Doesn't matter how fast they are or aren't. Just be a good communicator up front, be honest and fair and keep encouraging them. Had plenty of 23 minute kids turn into 16 min kids even if it took 4 years. Some may say that's not that good. No problem, we had plenty of 15's in front of them so it wasn't as if they were going to make varsity most years. Point is, they wanted to be part of something positive in their lives that had an impact on how they see the world around them.

How do you feel about football, baseball, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, field hockey, and every other sport making cuts based on ability?

Well, I would say that those sports having to make cuts isn't ideal, but that it seems to me that most schools try to include as many students as they reasonably can. I know a lot of large schools have JV and freshman teams in addition to their varsity teams. Those lower levels try to expand opportunity to as many students as possible that wish to participate.

Aside from simple budgetary expenditures on school sports, other limitations on how many kids can play include things like the difficulty of hiring enough coaches (high school coaches don't get paid much, and the practice schedule conflicts with a lot of 9-5 jobs) and facility space (which I guess is sort of a money issue, but the differences between buying 25 more uniforms and building another turf field or auxiliary gym aren't in the same stratosphere). So, I think the question of when schools have to start implementing cuts to sports teams is based on more than just yearly budget allocations. That's all the more reason why sports where it's easier to host a larger roster, such as cross country, should make an effort to do so.

Still, the goals of K-12 sports are education and enrichment opportunities for student growth, and that mission doesn't change just because there are some practical constraints on fully realizing it. Ideally, schools would be able to hire enough 1:1 reading tutors to make sure every single student reads on grade level. They don't actually have the funds to do that, but getting as many kids to read as well as possible is still their mission. Likewise, providing enriching athletic opportunities to as many kids as possible can still be the mission of a school's athletic department, even if they have to implement some restrictions due to practical/budgetary limitations.

Basket ball and other sports have limit of how many people can play in a game so having 50 people in basketball would be unreasonable but in xc unlimited number of people can enter a race

HS Sports has gotten really weird. In so many sports, the primary training arena is not the HS program. Soccer, swimming, soft ball, baseball, Lax, even basketball are mostly club based at the upper levels of talent. So often coaches come and go at a HS because they have their club talent there. In two of my kids sports, the coach at the HS is also the club team coach and most of the real practicing occurs at club practice where half-to-90% of the kids go to other schools.

It is, however, the primary arena in XC and track for all but a few of the fastest kids so I prefer that there be no cuts. This is due to the possibility of finding unknown talent AND to provide something heathy for kids to do. I have no issue with slow kids. My gripe is disruptive kids and they can be fast or slow..

Basically, many HS sports are on the path to exhibition. No practices, just whatever club team stars go to the school show up for the varsity competition. Its literally already that way in swimming. Now, obviously in bball and some others, teamwork is a factor but I still think HS sports are on a slippery slope toward irrelevance and I'm not even sure that is a bad thing. My kid's HS Swim team is literally just whatever local ringers happen to go to that school and on half dozen or so days a year they slap on a HS uni (there isn't even a team suit, tbh) and they race. Its no less exciting and I'm not even complaining but its just random chance that HS X is any good this year or that year. During the meat of the HS season, my kid swims against all the same kids mostly. One week under the HS banner and the next in a normal USA swimming meet with the club team.

Rambling, but leave XC and track alone. It can be a participation sport and a serious sport.

I also would love to see meets scored down to 10 (unofficially at least). 20 would be unworkable at big meets but I'm not opposed to the idea in principle. The issue is plenty of schools can't get 7 or even 5 and scoring to 10 or 20 is tough on small teams. Not all XC teams are big.

Hear, hear. I'm glad the OP is "fast"--maybe finishing races early will give him/her some extra time to learn how to write/spell English.

Yep, did the club swimming scene with my own kid. I get it. We controlled the level of participation in both practice and meets much to the chagrin of the coach who thought everyone should be doing what the Olympic Trials qualifiers should be doing. Not gonna happen since I'm paying the coaches fee. However, since he though she should be doing more, he demanded that she swim certain events at the state club meet that she wasn't training for and meet his standards/times if she was to be left in her current training group and not moved down to slower groups. Essentially being punished for not doing 9 or 10 practices a week at about 10k yards/session. I readily accepted that challenge.

My daughter did not experience burnout, tiger parents or broken shoulders because of our restraint. She also got straight A's in school, had a great group of friends that weren't as catty as the club swim kids and had time to be a kid in general. Needless to say, she smashed every one of his standards and was quickly replacing relay members during the meet after she completed her assignment. She swam 12 races in 3 days and won 2 state titles.

The coach was a 92 Olympian and swam in Barcelona. He had no clue as to how to bring young people along that weren't already great but sure liked to tell everyone how great he was. My kid and others, through common sense and hard work were his greatest successes and he didn't have the ability to recognize it.

you're ignoring THE NUMBERS. if you want to compare XC to "cut" sports your problem is most schools have multiple teams in sports, and at more levels than XC. my HS had for football and hoops, varsity, JV, soph, frosh. so my guess is 150+ football players make that "cut" in some form and 50+ hoops players are on "a" team. i played school soccer and it was 18 varsity + 18 JV = 36 before we cut anyone. our varsity has previously won state, and my time period we made state final 8, with a lot of varsity off the 2 travel teams that took turns winning select state. and we still had guys on JV on the bench who hadn't played organized soccer in years and were donkeys who could barely hit a pass straight.

are you implying you have 36XC runners? 50? 150? exactly. thanks. this is not college, only so many HS in my area even fill up JV and frosh teams to score.

in terms of "cost," entries are usually "per team," we took a school bus where 5 guys or 50 is no added cost, uniforms and spikes doubled as TF equipment -- and they needed more unis than we did -- and we bought our own trainers. no food or drink provided, BYOB.

if this isn't a troll post, you have XC confused with TF. it's a team sport. if we can't even run out enough JV to score, and someone offers, are we turning him down? ha. no, we are not taking the full team budget, cutting the rest, and sending you individually to foot locker.

I have a senior who is the perfect example of why you don't. 23 min in his first race as a freshman. He followed that up with at 31 min "walk" because he wasn't feeling well. He had another 24 minute stroll on tough course. Immature and unmotivated. He broke 20 in the district meet that season. That was the turning point. He pushed too hard at regionals trying to run with the top dogs and crawled over the line in 20 flat. Decided to take it seriously from then and trained hard. Ups and downs with injuries and form but went on to run 17.51 at regionals the following year. His junior year he ran 16:55 at the state meet. He currently has a seasons best time of 15:01. 14:30 is the realistic goal. He's talking about sub 14 though.

Just imagine if he was told not to come back out as a freshman because he wasn't good enough to run in JV races. Never give up on a kid.

After freshman year, cut the slow kids. By that time they know they have to run over the summers to be competitive.

also, my experience was we had about 3-4 guys a year who were 4:10-4:25 mile, had been the junior high distance TF core, and were the HS varsity TF distance people for the 3 1600 and 3200 slots. that is not enough to score or for a full varsity here. if you want to compete you have to invest in 18 min type guys and upgrade them. and you have 4 years to do it if you get them out as frosh.

kind of like, i take issue with how school soccer teams tend to run. you have the kids 3-4 months a year, 4 years. that's about a year total. not your fault if when they show up frosh a chunk of your JV are inexperienced donkeys, and some of your varsity bench plays low select or rec or played 5 years ago. it IS your problem if they are still scrubs in 4 years, assuming they make varsity. IMO there should be more investment in school soccer in drilling the kids on foot skills, passing, thinking on your feet, what we are taught in select. invest in your players.

likewise, having only so many stars in XC, you have to invest in the rank and file and JV. you may need them for the 5th guy, or they may be good enough for a 7th as an upperclassman.

last, my personal experience as a hurdler was a friend of mine who would only make some meets in junior high, non-scorer, couple mediocre years on JV, suddenly found some foot speed, blew up senior year, won tough varsity races in a tough state, and made regionals. D1 type times.