High School XC

You can have fun and work hard to. Also kids want to be part of a winning team. So once you start winning it can help get some kids out. If you go hard right away you will definitely scare people away but if you are progressive in your approach it can help retain athletes. It can take years but the great thing about XC is you usually have two track seasons to help recruit and increase expectations.

Are you actively trying to recruit kids to the team from inside your school? You have an advantage working at the school during the day. What are you doing to get more kids on the team?

I coach track as well, and I am actively trying to recruit. I actually teach anywhere from grades 7,8,10,11-12 in a given year.

The battles we face is we are currently around 50 kids per grade. We offer football, soccer, xc, band, cheerleading, girls volleyball, color guard, and CO-ED Golf....

Almost every year, I have non-existent junior high numbers, everyone thinks they will be a big football star or volleyball..., then through track, I can usually get a couple boys to come over and run XC for me...

I never had issues years ago, but last 3-5 years has been draining on trying to get enough to even fill out teams.

All you can do is encourage kids to come out, train up the ones you have and make it a fun (but hardworking) experience. Worrying about the other stuff doesn't help you.

you look up the feeder middle school results and contact those kids. they are already open to running. you just have to get them to do it for HS.

you obviously chase the TF kids who should be low hanging fruit.

you scout PE classes.

you ask existing athletes to double on sports for the whole season. soccer, hoops, but even others thinking outside the box.

or you talk to kids who have another sport about parachuting in for the state progression meet. like i won't make you do practices but can you come to meets. or the area championship. so you're not asking the full package.

all else fails, cattle call for any interested students. come try.

in terms of your related question, if you have basic numbers issues, only a crazy person handles their program in that scenario in a high mileage, high ambitions, harsh coaching manner.

you can carve up the group. if you have a few veteran kids with talent and fitness, you get the super serious workouts and train as group 1. ok, you are the out of shape noobs or players from other sports who don't show immediate genius, you're group 2, we'll do easier workouts and build you up.

honestly a lot of coaches on here sound like they just saddle up existing star kids. that's easy. and that encourages running the kids hard day 1 of practice. you have to actually make runners and build a program. you might want to work on a longer timeframe. my goal is to have you competitive by the end of the season. my goal is to have you good in 2-3 years. maybe they don't need 2 sets of strides plus 6 x 1 mile intervals to start their first ever practice.

to elaborate on don't go crazy if you need numbers. maybe think of ways to make practices more fun. maybe some cross-training. maybe keep the load down. be flexible with other teams, practice demands.

to me you have to promote interest and get numbers before you worry too much about team ambitions.

however, that does not stop you from investing in the best kids. and you can do things like pursuit chases to recognize the differences and push the stars. ok, the other kids get a head start on the interval and the rest chase. maybe even in an approximation of exact quality designed where they arrive together in theory.

last, i personally think TF builds better to XC than other way around. XC is like distance boot camp. if some kid just shows up and has never run, to me it's actually easier to build up from running sprint distances and workouts, to distance, than starting cold in XC.

I'm an assistant coach at a small school. Our numbers were pretty low with only two freshman boys a few years ago. I'm fairly new but the program has been pretty successful in the past. That is quickly forgotten and overshadowed by football.

We've been doing some rebuilding and have started from within by changing our culture. We decided that we'd rather have a smaller team of dedicated kids. We used to give out attendance awards but no more. Perfect attendance is expected. The team as a whole will be more successful if kids are there for every workout and run. I think it was Tony Holler who said to make practice the best part of a kids day and that has been what we are trying to do. Kids will bring their friends if they like the program.

You're not alone in your struggle. Good luck

I have no advice but can commiserate. I wasn't the coach but was a parent on a booster club for the team. I had a fun high school experience as a top runner on a good team and wanted my kids to experience the same. After all was said and done, my kids had a good experience but all success was measured at an individual level since we barely fields a full team of seven. I could not fault the coach: he worked hard, was entertaining, and the kids and parents liked him.

As booster parents, we set up sign up tables, held fund-raisers that earned money for new uniforms and tents, and provided spaghetti dinners and an awards banquet. None of that mattered as much as the close friendships that my kids developed around the neighborhood. Those friends signed up and so did some of their friends' friends, enough to have complete teams and even a few on JV. But as soon as my kids graduated (along with their friends), the school end back to not having enough runners for complete teams again.