Why do Texas high school girls only race 2 miles in XC?

Ask your HS coach?

Girls' HS xc is not popular (i.e. competitive) enough in Texas to make a 5k race more or even close to as compelling as 2 miles has been. There'd simply be larger margins of victory with a couple of changes in minor placings. It is what it is.

Because if you're a woman in texas, you only don't have time to run a full 5k in the time between washing the breakfast dishes and starting to prepare lunch.

You live in TX. wrote:

Ask your HS coach?

Girls' HS xc is not popular (i.e. competitive) enough in Texas to make a 5k race more or even close to as compelling as 2 miles has been. There'd simply be larger margins of victory with a couple of changes in minor placings. It is what it is.

I'm no longer in high school. I thought that a lot of other states had a 5k for high school girls.

I didn't imply that you were. You still run and you don't know how to contact your HS coach? Many states do go with 5k for HS girls, what of it?

Hawaii went to 3 miles for girls for the first time two years ago. As a girls team coach at the time, my first thought was, "It's about time." I did not anticipate the negative reaction to that change. Coaches in our league complained that they would lose most of their teams due to the increase because their girls would not tolerate the extra distance. I had parents of girls on my team who said that making their daughters run 3 miles was punishment.

I am glad they did it & have not gone back, but man, what a stink about it. Sorry if this does not relate to the situation in Texas but it's just offered for what it's worth.

Yeah, that's probably the biggest reason it has been and will be hard to change, the current crop of parents. It probably could've been changed in the 60s or 70s or even in the 80s, but typical parents of the typical distance runner type kid are an ignorant and overprotective lot especially when it comes to girls.

if they ran a full 5k, i won't have time to bone them.

ain't that right tex?

I was expecting a great punchline when I opened this thread. I'm very disappointed. Sorry for making absolutely no contribution to the topic.

Minnesota girls run 4K, about 2.5 miles...

Training for and racing 5k would not leave enough time for cheerleading practice.

Because everything is bigger in Texas; 2 Texas miles is like a 5k in other states.

Ohio had 2.5 miles as the cc distance for a short period of time.

"That way, they would be better prepared for college cross country since those races are often even longer than 5k."

You mean when they bump it up to a whole 6k for the NCAA championships?

Girls shouldn't be running 5k's in high school. Two miles is really too far for most of them. I would limit cross country to 1 mile or 10 minutes, whichever comes first.

That's the way it's always been. The move is on to change that. A questionaire was sent out to all A.D.s and it was brought up at last years cross country coaches conference to make it 5k for girls. It looks now like 5A girls will run 5k while all other classes remain 3200m. Not a good solution but that may be the first step to makng it 5k across the board.

The girls run 5k's during the season like at McNeil and Nike South and a couple others. Eventually they plan on increasing the length to 4k at state than a full 5k.

An even more pertinent question is why do NCAA women only race 6k in XC?

I ran a 5k for the girls division at the meet I hosted this year. One "problem" I see with it is that with the early season heat here in Texas, it could take some of your JV runners 30 mintutes + to cover the race distance. I takes some of the male JV runners to do so as well. So at some of the meets, we'll have to limit the number of race divisions so that the races won't be going off at 11:00am when it can get pretty rough for racing in September. As far as girls handling the distance, I think it wouldn't be a problem. Some of the resitance comes from the smaller schools where a lot of your girls are also playing volleyball and can't commit the time/energy to the training for a 5k. Personally I'm 50/50 on the issue....I can see a lot of value in girls who are looking to take the next step up in competition to race a 5k...but I also think that at that age, they can benefit from a program strong on speed/strength development - which may be overlooked by going to a longer race distance. The best solution may be to have the 5k distance available at some of the more popular regular season meets so coaches/athletes have the option on which distance most fits the needs of the team....

I think this is a good thread. I'm thinking about writing na editorial on this.

Instead of saying 'equality' is making sure we have 50 men on the men's track team and 50 on the women's, why don't we have true equality instead of total ridiculousness.

I've always wondered in this day and age of Title ix why the women in college only run 5k or 6k. How about real cross country? Same thing with the women at worlds.

Maybe I should start another thread. Why do women run 6k in college?

Under similar thinking, I think having women's ice hockey without checking is inherently sexist just as is running 6k. It all stems from the mindset of women aren't strong enough to do real sports that used to exist in the day. At the olymics, women didn't use to run longer than 800 m.

Christine Brennan had a great column in USAToday about the subtle sexism in sports. One is distances. What she talked about was the names. Lady this and lady that. You don't hear about the "Male XXX". It's just the XXX.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-04-03-brennan-nicknames_N.htm?csp=34

The term WNBA is along the same lines. Why don't they rename the NBA the MNBA?

-Rojo

read "the silence of great distance." all your questions will be answered.