Team No-Drinking Policy

.............................. wrote:

If enough people on this team think that a no drinking policy is a problem, then the team itself has already set its own destiny.

Even at the age of 18, if you don't realize that drinking can in NO WAY improve your performance, then there is a problem.

If someone who can't even make a division 3 top 7 doesn't isn't doing everything in their power to do so, then there is a problem.

I am sure your school has plenty of social clubs like frats that can give you companionship with drinking as a theme. Do that.

Don't waste the time of your coach, or the team mates who respect our sport.

There's no problem with drinking a few beers now and again. Gasp, even during the season!

Worry about your races first, your training second, and you probably shouldn't get wasted all the time or eat too many candy bars.

Other than that, it's college, have fun. Do you best.

I'm not really sure when and where these "no drinking policies" started popping up.

I think your captain's policy is ridiculous. He has no more right to make a blanket "no drinking" rule than he does to make a "no girlfriends" rule or a "no stay up late studying" rule.

If your captain wants to ban drinking at team events, that is fine. Otherwise, what you choose to do with your own time is none of his damn business.

i agree with the previous poster. we didn't drink during the second half of CC, but it didn't matter if guys who weren't competing anymore did. and if i had to do it all over, i would have done a little drinking throughout the season...it never hurt in track. in fact, i did better in track even with the occasional nights of heavy drinking. tell your captain to take the stick out of his ass.

Sounds like overkill, but maybe some people on the team (i.e. hard boozing party animals) need a hard-line policy to stay on track. Personally, I always enjoy a drink or two the night before a race. It's a nice way for me to relax and stay calm so I kick ass when the gun goes off the next day! That said, I suggest being discreet. If the team makes nationals, get bombed!

Captain says no drinking, then no drinking. Buck up.

Good policy, stick with it.

No drinking by the seniors also shows solidarity with the under-21's, who can't drink anyway...

Seems like it could be a decision made by more than one person. If all the Upperclassmen decided that there would be no more drinking, it would have a little more merit than just one person. Sometimes when captains do that it just seems (1) they do not trust anyone on their team, (2) they do not drink in the first place, (3) they decided they wouldn't drink, and don't want anybody else to have fun.

Some people would definitely benefit from not drinking during the season, but I really don't think it has too much of an impact on a lot of other serious runners. Most of them are not stupid enough to do anything to jeopardize their running. Alcohol will have no negative effect whatsoever if consumed responsibly.

present wrote:

No drinking by the seniors also shows solidarity with the under-21's, who can't drink anyway...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, have you ever been in college?

These policies rarely work. At least that's what I observed empirically.

If you stay off your feet, get to bed reasonably early, and hydrate, a few drinks here and there isn't going to hurt you.

The pacts just make everyone uptight and tense and super anal, which are characteristics that a lot of runners would be well served to keep in check.

There is no one-size-fits-all rulebook for running well.

Of course, there will be plenty of uptight fellows who disagree with me. But let me repeat: As a former D1 athlete, I knew of a number of teams/schools who tried these pacts. No one in the end said they were effective.

I think it really depends on the dynamics of the team that you are dealing with. I used to coach a DII cross-country team that clearly drank excessively. They would show up late to early morning practices after a chug-a-lug session with mint-flavored gum in their months. They couldn't fool me, though. I only wish the head coach had some balls and had taken away some scholarship money for their infractions. The team had absolutely no discipline and actually "gained weight" throughout the season from shitty eating and heavy alcohol consumption. As a former DI athlete, I had had enough of this apathy and had to walk away from it. I don't mind alcohol consumption in moderation, but the problem is most college students drink to get wasted.

dasadaddasads wrote:

As a former D1 athlete, I knew of a number of teams/schools who tried these pacts. No one in the end said they were effective.

Well it worked on my team when we had pacts like this in college. Maybe those teams had poor leadership.

Here's the deal: getting drunk is fun, but it can affect your running performance. People who say it has no affect whatsoever are stupid or have never gotten drunk enough. Therefore, it is not a good idea to get drunk near the end of the season when you have your most important races.

People who are too slow don't get to run in those races at the end of the season. Should they be rewarded for their slowness by being able to get drunk when the faster runners can't? That doesn't sound like the reward system I would want to set up on my team.

In a perfect world a policy like this would not be necessary. The slower runners would realize that their drinking makes it more difficult for the faster runners to abstain, and they would also act in solidarity with the faster runners by not drinking because they understand what it means to be part of a team. Not everybody is that wise, so you need the leaders or the captains to make rules for the betterment of the team as a whole. It's also their job to explain why they made the rule. I think that is what happened here.

Let me add that I realize there is a distinction between having a few drinks and getting drunk. A lot of college students do not however, and the drinking itself makes it difficult for someone to realize when they're crossing that line. That is why it is helpful to have a rule to make it crystal clear to people what is expected of them. The policy could be no drinking at all, or it could be a maximum of two drinks per night or whatever you want. Personally I like the rule for no drinking at all because people will naturally try to stretch the boundaries of what a "drink" is. A 24 oz. can of Mickey's is technically one drink right? Furthermore, it's only for four or five weeks. If you can't go for that long for any reason, let alone a good one like this, then you probably need to attend some AA meetings.

Our team has the same policy. I think it's a good one.

I don't exactly see the point of captains on a XC team. What gives them the right to decide what is best for you.

In this case, at least, the coach.

I think this sounds like total BS. Once your season is over they shouldn't be controlling celebratory actions(especially on Halloween...that's the best day of the year to be wasted).

However, you should talk to the men in charge before going against their will. Voice an opinion and you may get respect and the desired change. Covertly disobeying orders never ends up well.

PS - on the idea of drinking/running I tried an experiment a few weeks ago. I was running my first XC race this year (I'm 2 years post collegiate) and decided the night before that I was going to have a normal night of drinking the night before the race (5 beers, stay out till 1 ish). I followed the plan, got about 5 hrs of sleep, and had a really good race the next morning. It wasn't until about halfway into the race that I remembered I had been out drinking the night before.

That being said, I live in San Diego, so dehydration isn't much of an issue.

In any case, through this one time experiment, I found that drinking a moderate amount of booze had little to no effect on my running. :-D

Something to think about if you're bored the night before a race.

To be quite honest, sometimes the idea of captains can be quite overrated. The whole point of a team is collaboration, so to have just one guy calling all the shots is a bit ridiculous. That being said, that shouldn't mean that they shouldn't have a certain amount of authority, but you should use your discretion. If you strongly disagree with something your captain tells you to do, then don't do it, especially when if you're not a scoring member on a D3 team. Not to diss D3 or anything, because I run for a D3 team, but at that level, especially if you are not a scoring guy, you should be running just because you like it or because you want to get better. There is no reason why you can't both improve in running and drink, and there is also no reason why drinking should take away from your focus on improvement (as long as you drink in moderation and responsibly as opposed to destructively).

In regards to your captain, you should probably go along with his decision until the end of your individual season, but there's no reason why a captain should be able to dictate your life after that point. A captain's opinion may be valid in the context of practice time and time spent with the team, but if such opinions intrude on your personal life than I don't feel that they necessarily need to be adhered to. Even in practice, however, not all captain's decisions are valid, as some of his/her opinion may actually be detrimental to training. The role of a captain is threefold: to set an example (things like work ethic and obeying coach's orders), to provide guidelines and to create team solidarity. When a captain takes it upon himself to exceed those roles, it can take away from the fun of running on a team. However, I would say that you should voice your opinion about it first just so that it is established that you disagree. I would say its more admirable to violate a captain's decision if he knows that you don't agree with it than if you stay silent and just disregard it.

OK... first of all... it's DIII... second of all, my DIII team is drunk right now, and we're going to kick your DIII team's asses at nationals... if you even make it...

So... your captain is taking things way too seriously and doesn't realize that you have to have fun to run fast... bitch....

Screaw that dude. Its cross country not that big of a deal in retrospect. Are you going to make a living off running after you graduate college? No. When you reflect back on college, 20 years in the future. Wow remember those friday nights when I was being a good little boy following my teams communist policies. Or getting hammared at a halloween party slaying chicks? Unless you are hurting your team's performance by boozing then whats the big deal. You only live once my man. Explore and have a good time while knowing your limits.

In the retropsect of live you can run until your legs off. Yet, again going back to my 20 years in the future example. You are not going to be able to stay out until 3 in the morning having a great time. (Sure you could do that 20 years in the future, however more than likely if you do this on occassion you have not made much of your life). Again this is a perspective of a former D3 runner/frat dude who cut out drinking when it came to before races and whatnot. And I regret sacrificing my social life for a cross country meet.