Are high school cross country tryouts the norm?

Definitely not... all XC and track teams should be non-cut. What is the coach expecting?

Most are non cut but it’s not always. Some get more kids then they have resources for (coaches, uniforms, busses, etc.)

some coaches just don’t want to deal with slow kids.

It didn't say in the email, but from what my wife is being told by other parents, something like a 20 minute for 3 miles My son can't run that fast, unfortunately. He is trying right now to do the summer list of running, but he is more like doing a 25 minute 3 mile run according to his garmin when he said he tried to run his fastest. I know that he isn't the most talented, but he is willing to run anything the coach asks of him.

Talk to the coach

It might be an arbitrary number that the coach is using to convince them to do the Summer running. Just have him follow the plan and put in the hard work and see what happens.

Very strange to have a cutoff to make the team entirely for XC. Varsity obviously has time cutoffs even during the summer to plan training.

Very few kids can run 3 miles in 20 minutes with no training, and the vast majority of kids who can need a coach to get themselves fast enough to run that. Does he expect every single freshmen to be like a 4 year club veteran?

Unless your team is an NXN contender or something and is overflowing with talent, then your coach is lazy and finding excuses to not have to do his job.

Makes the kids put in the work over the summer.

20 minutes for three miles should be attainable by most healthy, semi athletic teenage boys.

It's like trying out for the baseball team and you can't throw the ball across the diamond.

I guess. But my kid is working hard, following all of the workouts. He seems to be an average teen. I can understand having certain expectations, it's just hard to realize you never get a chance.

My freshman year of HS I joined the XC team simply because I liked to run. I wasn't necessarily good, but I enjoyed the activity and I wanted to be on a team that was involved with it. I didn't really care about times or PRs because I was still new and learning. That's how it should be

It wasn't until my sophomore/junior years when I started taking it seriously and was hitting 16-17 minute 5K's and wanting to improve. Your freshman year should not be restricted to a time cutoff. That is the period when you adjust

Why not? Just about every other sport makes cuts. But make it more like 24 min for boys 27 min for girls. Do not believe 8 min mile pace for boys and 9 min mile pace for girls is asking too much

We don’t have tryouts but we also don’t have big numbers.

I’d suggest that he keep running over the summer and see where he ends up. He might surprise himself in an actual race.

I cut to 55. It gets us to a number that we can handle for travel. We have 60 uniforms. We have only 2 coaches which makes it hard to manage even at 55. We try not to cut incoming freshmen but will cut a 25 minute guy. We usually cut around 22 minutes for the other grades.

re the people making expense excuses, XC often share unis with track which usually has several more people. the spikes can double as track spikes. the XC coach is usually doubling as TF coach or something else. i think entry fees are usually by team. where is this added expense?

now there is also "participation," but IMO few schools have dozens of kids playing a la southlake carroll. i went to an above average program with some state records and championships, and you could fit both sexes, varsity and subvarsity, on a single school bus. our subvarsity teams were usually only part-full and could stand more competitors. it also strikes me as fake inasmuch as a school might carry 36 kids or more on varsity and JV soccer, dozens on football, perhaps multiple basketball teams with a dozen on each level. and a football team needs pads, helmets, cleats, multiple coaches with specific responsibilities, etc. i don't buy for a second a bunch of singlets and shorts, and a single coach saying run around that field and i will stopwatch you, are eating the school out of athletic house and home. bull. bull. bull.

It's done by coaches that have asked kids multiple times to put in the summer training, have a record of it/prove their readiness by the first week of official practice or dont bother. The lazy kids that just want a hangout in the fall and arent in any kind of shape tend to bring others around them down. Showing some commitment to themselves and the rest of the team in the summer is a minimal expectation. Those that dont, suck too much time and attention from coaches and teammates and are often injured in a couple weeks from trying to keep up with no preparation.

Agree or not with that approach, it does raise the bar for everyone vs creating a climate that It's ok to come into season out of shape. This approach is typically done by larger programs. Small programs cant afford this and will take any warm body they can get out even if they have to walk. I had a large program but nobody went to a meet if they didn't attend all in season required practices or couldnt run a 5k without walking. I just deemed them not ready yet. Usually, they just self eliminated and I never had to kick anyone off the team or have tryouts. Probably the biggest form of elimination is that they just couldnt keep up with the last kids because everyone came to 5 volunteer practices per week all summer if they were in town and running when they weren't. We had a lot of fun but at some point each day in the summer, it wasnt playtime and work had to be done. The culture was that we were going to have fun but remain competitive at all levels every year. Maybe we win or not but we were always in the hunt and everyone wanted to be a part of a program with a winning attitude. Some of my 4 year non varsity guys were the best assistant coaches I ever had!

If your kid is running consistently and the coach knows it, he wont get cut. Thats for the other kids that just wont commit to a winning attitude out of season which tends to carry over to in season. A little bit of a right of passage if you will.

I suggest that you become a volunteer coach and that you pay for the extra bus. You won't.

to me it's more likely you have a proto-fascist who somehow thinks that cutting slow kids makes the fast ones faster. what that really does is hide your coaching abilities by having those on the team all have quick times when they show up.

this is a fake discussion. 90% of XC teams aren't filling the existing one bus or subvarsity teams. my school the JV below us couldn't score, that's how few we had. 40-odd kids at the area JV meet from 8 schools.

Preparing for the season is everyone's responsibility. A coach should take every incoming freshman. Once kids are part of the team and know what's expected, there is no excuse for not doing the summer work. Maybe you let rising sophs screw it up once because they don't get how important it is. If they blow off a second summer of running, it's willful laziness and disregard for their responsibility to the team. No way they should be allowed on, no matter how fast they are. Keeping kids like that just sends a message the preparing for the summer is other people's responsibility, and they're unwilling to share in it.

does football artificially impose some "standard" or do they keep most everyone who shows up and they promote their scrubs all the way up to varsity their senior year? bul. bull. bull.

you can see the mentality from the poster who wants to weed out the "goof offs," "lazy," "walkers," etc. even if those kids would not make a fool of themselves in a local 5k.

no, it's exactly how i said it is. you try to flatter the fast kid -- or the school/public impression of them -- by setting standards impacting the slow kids. cutting slow kids doesn't make your 4:10 kid into a 4:10 kid. the best players on the team aren't afraid of being cut or motivated by fear of it.

you can guillotine the slow kids but all that is doing is creating the false impression that you're such a good coach you only have fast kids. nah, the cut did that. i personally find the general progression of the whole team more telling. otherwise you're the equivalent of a soccer coach rolling the ball out for the talent then taking credit.