Is there a point to pushing team unity in d1 track?

it is not just an individual sport. there are relays. there is willingness to do the training. there is willingness to go along with orders on what events to run or how to race that day.

sometimes you have some recruit or guy who plays another sport for the college over "there," and he's not quite sure whether to run track or play soccer "here." some of it is a competitive and winning program, yes, but if people are miserable, maybe that potential sprints and relays guy from football says, you know what, no. and he would have put you on the podium.

as someone who played for two jerk college coaches, soccer and track, the coach being a jerk drove off people into transfer. we would recruit well then lose half of it after they dealt with the coach. the track coach tended to be snooty who joined track. then you get to conference and it's like wow, this is all we have left? a lot of college sports is not just propping up the egos of the elite ayn rand athletes, but having a broader, deeper team with athletes staying involved whose best case is sneaking 8th at conference for a point. or that the "bench" stays so talent accumulates. you turn the place into a cesspool and talent transfers away and your single ayn rand athlete doesn't win conference by themselves. the team doesn't exist just to showcase you.

likewise, while i believe in competition, people need to be able to flip a switch and behave around those they have to see regularly. you can tout competition all you want but my experience when a teammate, egged on by the coach, was slide tackling his other teammates as motivation, i got sick of it, and clattered him right back, even harder. and that's how one of our best forwards is sitting out 2 games with an ankle injury. and i had been taught long ago, save that for the opposing teams. but to me that's the sort of disfunction you get when you egg on teammates against each other. it sounds cute on ayn rand paper. in reality the team grows to hate the coach and each other, half the team quits or transfers, and you're recruiting to patch holes as opposed to elevate the team to the top.

no, my experience good teams there is a little tension as everyone wants to be good, and they push each other in practice, but there are ethical bounds, we fight harder against the other teams, we support and criticize each other, we are accountable, but we at least pretend to get along off the court.

last, but i personally found teams organized around lionizing the best athletes to be myopic and suboptimal. way too much effort would go into way too few people, when i thought we had several other athletes who could have been podium worthy or scored points. worse, IMO it's often good cover for crap coaching. it is easy to saddle up the best and try to get them to win conference or make nationals. it actually requires limited coaching skill. spreading it across the team to chase "little points" from less obviously talented athletes actually requires more real coaching. i get more impressed when a coach, say, takes a "bench" guy from 18 min 5k to 15 min 5k, turns them into an integral part of the XC team, than when he saddles up someone who showed up running 15. any idiot can do that. a lot of ayn rand to me turns into a cherry picking exercise which can disguise incompetence.

Team unity can have benefits, definitely: if you've got your whole team rooting for you, you can often find that extra gear or dig a little deeper. Relays are a lot more fun if the rest of the team is going wild, and if the other teams are doing likewise. We've all experienced the absolute hype train that is a well-contested 4x400 at the end of a meet when all the other athletes are done and going nuts for their squad.

However, it can be a bit overrated. If some athlete wasn't into the team aspect and kept to themselves, but put in the actual work of training and did not disrupt others' training, I wouldn't take any action or insist they show more team spirit. I've been a coach for 30 plus years, and some seasons you've got a squad and some seasons you've got some good individuals. The seasons where your team can compete for titles are the most fun, and the easiest to get the squad into real team spirit. So in a way, the way to create team spirit is to get the athletes to buy in individually to their own job on the team. This is, after all, an individual sport (barring relays obviously) into which we've sort of finagled some team elements out of whole cloth, more or less.

The most successful coaches over the long term push team unity and team titles. John McDonnell had quality athletes across all event groups. I'm and older athlete from the Northeast and believe nothing is more exciting than the college relays at the Penn Relays.

Team unity absolutely is important in D1 track.

Picture this: you need an athlete to double or triple at conference - how are you going to convince him not to sandbag some races to have a better shot at later ones if he doesn't believe the team's placing is important.

How are you going to get an athlete to practice baton handoffs if he thinks the relays are just some side show.

Without a sense of team unity, you'll get athletes transferring or quitting to focus on academics that would otherwise stick around.

When I read the topic, I thought “stupid, everybody knows team unity is important”. But after reading the first couple of posts appears it’s a mixed bag.

curious if coaches/athletes had high team unity and whether it correlated to better performance or was negligible? And vice versa did low team unity lead to poor performance?

Going to push back and say that some level of team cohesion is important even in a largely individual sport. First, humans are social critters. While we vary in our degrees, we (mostly) like to be a part of a group. Second, you get a situation where they can push each other to be better. Older athletes can help younger ones.

Maybe a thrower and middle distance runner click and cheer each other on or help one another when struggling.

So while maybe not the profile of more "team" sports, there still is some good to come from it.

Think about it this way: at any level, whether its HS or D1, team culture is electrifying. Watching your teammates accomplish big PRs and wins is inspiring, and cheering on your relays brings so much needed energy to the sport. Without cheering, pushing eachother to do better, and uplifting eachother, the sport is dull.