I sent an email to a coach about walking on 6 weeks ago, no reply, what do I do now?

potential walkon wrote: the school is a 7 hour drive, but i go there for orientation soon. is it possible to meet with the coach then? by slow side, im not that slow but this is a really good d1 school so ill have to work hard this summer.

You can try. If the head coach is not there meet with one of the assistants.

Call ahead of time and find out what time someone will be in the office. Look at your schedule and see when you have free time that would allow you to get over there.

The more communication you have with the coaches ahead of time, the better.

definitely going to the school. i already graduated. what should the follow up email say? just what i said in the first one?

and no im a 7 hour drive away so not close enough.

Can you fly there? Honestly, I would say you are showing little initiative. A seven hour drive is not that much. You could do it in a weekend. Will it cost money? Yes, but it is a small factor in perspective of what you are about to lay out for your education. Call the XC or T&F office and she when the coach will be in. Also, make sure it is the coach for XC and distance that you are contacting. Contact assistants if possible. Assistants are much more likely to reply. Many HC will take a month off or be in the office very little in June/July. If no one in the T&F/XC office answers call the Athletic Department. As a walk-on you are going to have to fight every step of your college career and be persistent. You could train for five years and never go a single mile in a van to a meet. Are you willing to do this? The walk-on lifestyle is much different, and I am unsure that you really have the commitment to actually run. This is probably what the coach of the school that you are attending is thinking too. Make him/her know your commitment. It is too easy to e-mail or post on LetsRun. Why did you not go to the office when you made your campus visit? You have a lot of thinking to do my friend.

I agree with a lot of this. Our head coach never calls or emails a recruit unless it is potentially a full-ride athlete trying to make their final decision. The assistants do all the recruiting. If you really want to walk-on, it will be a very hard fight and take a lot of commitment. Some coaches don't return the first calls and emails just to weed out the first layer of athletes without potential to make it. If you're not even dedicated enough to keep trying, how are you going to be dedicated enough to gut it out when things get hard?

And while you think right now this is something you want to do because you're pretty fast and might have a chance, do you really love the sport enough that you're going to want to come to practice every day and be ignored, never get to compete, and maybe not even practice with the top guys? It's not like high school. Just because you're on the same team doesn't necessarily mean you'll ever do anything with those national qualifiers. At some schools the walk-ons and even conference level guys practice at a different time of day with a different coach than the XC top 7 or the track national qualifiers. Even if you're okay with that now, what happens when you've been grinding it out for 3 or 4 years without competing, with no attention, maybe with injuries from training too hard as you try to dazzle the coaches and earn a spot at a meet?

i am fine with that. i understand it will be hard and a lot of work, but i just want to keep running.

I did the same thing back in the late 70s at one of the best D1 programs in the country at the time.

I thought my 1:59 and 9:33 were pretty fast - no internet, no Facebook, not much information to easily access to learn that I was not qualified.

Bottom line - I was in WAY OVER MY HEAD. Didn't come back after the first 2 days of practice. Pretended I was Frank Shorter for the next 2 years and trained my ass off - this is during a time when everybody and their grandmother seemed to be running 120 mile weeks. I improved dramatically and was uniformed, and dressed and traveled with the team for junior and senior year.

Get prepared and good luck

potential walkon wrote:

i am interested in walking onto a good team. my prs are a bit on the slow side but i am not that developed and i think i have potential and can make the team. i sent the coach an email about walking on 6 weeks ago but got no reply. i assumed the coach was busy because this team is good and sent a lot of runners to nationals. still no reply, should i email again? what should i say?

He probably didn't respond because he figures any kid who can't even capitalize properly isn't worth the bother.

I'd like to hear other's walk on stories as I am sure each is different.

I mostly sprinted in high school and ran 50.2 but also ran 2:02 and figured the 800 would be my event in college.

I never talked to a college coach while in high school.

I registered to go to college at George Mason which was close to where I lived.

I didn't bother talking to anyone before school started and finally looked into it in early September.

I found the sprint coach before practice and he said I had to get a physical first (I missed the school physicals so I had to get one on my own).

I then talked to the distance coach, Cook, and he also told me to get a physical. When I told him I had one he said to jump in with the sprinters the next day since cross country was already in season (and I didn't have much distance base to hang with them).

So I did that and ran the whole school year with them racing 400's and 800's (ran 1:55.8).

2nd year I had knee surgery in the summer and again didn't do cross country by I joined Cook's group for training mid fall. Ran 1:53.5 sophmore year and 4:05 1500m.

3rd year improved to 1:50.7 / 3:54.6

Received partial scholarship (1/4) senior year and ran 1:49.7 and 3:52.4.

Had 5th year indoor eligibilty and had final semester full scholarship. Qualified for NC's in 4X800.

Ran 3:42.9 outdoors unnattached.

Hit 3:42.1 three years later to run USATF.

Mason was not much of a cross country school but very good at 400m, 800m and the jumps and hit top 3 at NCAA team scoring a few times.

They let anyone walk on and practice and had enough home and local meets for walk ons to compete.

Maybe cross country focused teams with big numbers of runners have a different view to letting anyone run with them.

(There was no email in my day)

I'm sure Oregon, Wisco, Stanford, etc. get 25+ guys emailing them each year who are 16:00/4:25/9:40 guys who are 'undertrained' and promise to work really really hard, yet how many go on to become Andrew Wheatings?

I don't know your background, so I'm not trying to discourage you, but in most instances, it's going to boil down to if you can produce the results the coach needs.

Showing interest by flying in to meet them, or emailing them might grant you a shot to get a 2nd look, but they're trying to weigh whether or not you have the potential to produce at the conference and NCAA level.

potential walkon wrote:

well i know the way the walk on system works is a time trial is held on a course and you have to try to get under the time to walk on to the team.

If this is the process that the coach has established for walking on then I'm not sure what good it will do trying to contact the coach. You can call and introduce yourself and talk until you're blue in the fact but it appears that, at the end of the day, the only way you're going to be walking on is by running under the set time.

Yours is a nice story, toro. Unfortunately this is not the case at the vast majority of D1s. Even at schools which are slightly above mid-majors coaches hesitate to let runners walk-on. The OP says the coach qualified many to NCAAs so I think this post is mostly right:

kmess wrote:

It's not like high school. Just because you're on the same team doesn't necessarily mean you'll ever do anything with those national qualifiers. At some schools the walk-ons and even conference level guys practice at a different time of day with a different coach than the XC top 7 or the track national qualifiers. Even if you're okay with that now, what happens when you've been grinding it out for 3 or 4 years without competing, with no attention, maybe with injuries from training too hard as you try to dazzle the coaches and earn a spot at a meet?

My story:

I was only about a 4:36 mile guy coming out of high school and the coach at the college I was going to told me I needed to be about 4:20 to 4:25 to walk on. I essentially had to beg about 4 different times to work out with the team. Well, that sort of worked, but it was not until I saw one of the guys from the team at the gym, and he just happened to be a really nice guy and told me where and when the practiced. I met up with the team, and they essentially brought me to the coach and then he allowed me to join in on the work outs. Well...I was in for a rude awakening. I only put in about 20 miles a week in high school, and was now putting in 50...and I still could not hang with most of the guys. The workouts were unlike anything I had ever done. I ran one race unatt. in the spring and hit 4:08 for the 1500. The coach said it was good enough to walk on.

Long story short, I decided that the 80-110 miles per week they required once you were a walk on was not for me. I didn't pursue my "dreams" of running in college. I have regreted only a few times when I have seen the team win conf. or something, but other than that, I have been totally happy just running 30-40 miles a week and doing other things with my life. The team was a good team, some years a top 25. I think I gave up once I realized that my 4:08 for the 1500 was at a slower pace than our best guy that ran the 3000 under 8. I realized that I would have to work my tail off for the next 3 years to even have a chance at being the best guy on a mediocre team. So...I said no thanks. Really make sure you want to do this.

OP, what are your PRs? You don't have to be exact to give away your identity, maybe just give a range.

[quote]a coach... wrote:

I'm sure Oregon, Wisco, Stanford, etc. get 25+ guys emailing them each year who are 16:00/4:25/9:40 guys who are 'undertrained' and promise to work really really hard, yet how many go on to become Andrew Wheatings?[quote]

I was in this exact category, and ran for one of those schools... I can tell you that as much as I enjoyed being part of that team, I just never felt like I belonged with the team... I was more of a cross country guy, all-state 2 years in a row, with pretty modest track pr's... I show up for practice and everyone there is a footlocker guy, state champ, or NCAA all-american...

I never was intimidated or scared of running with them, but it just never felt like I could really be a "part" of the team... I ended up transfering to a div 3 school and it ended up being a great decision... Ended my career as a 9 minute steeple type... and enjoyed being an integral part of our program....

I would say that running for the big d1 school can be an amazing experience... I guess in the end, I just wanted the opportunities to race and be a contributing member of a team more than I wanted to be a 6th or 7th man and going to 3 track meets a year.

WHAT SCHOOL ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE?

I am just curious about other stories.

We had 30 minute 8K guys running. Guys that couldn't break 50 running the 400.

You only get a dozen scholarships.

Mason would have 4 guys in mid distance, 4 in the sprints, a couple of jumpers and split the remaining couple of scholarships.

So the distance guys were all walk ons.

Guys would join and then drop off. Coach would send slower guys ahead on longer repeats for other guys to chase. I was being chased in the early years.

The year they won indoor NCAA's I think they had a 1st in the 400, 1st in the mile, 2nd in the 800 and top 3 in the 4X400 and DMR and points in the long jump. They also had walk ons training with them.

So these schools that hesitate to let runners walk on, do they give all of their scholarships to distance runners and focus on cross country and distance events on the track?

Show some initiative. Get your butt into the coach's office.

There have been a lot of good suggestions, let me recap and add some from experience:

Train hard. Talk with friends, former teammate, coaches who have ran at the D1 level and get an idea of what you need to do. Train with them over the summer.

Try and contact the coaching staff through multiple different means - calls, e-mails, etc.

Use social networking tools like Facebook for guys already on the team.

Find out how the coach usually deals with walk-ons like yourself. Some coaches will let them come out as long as they work hard and don't get in the way - others, not so much.

Be persistent and prepared. If you have to find out when the first day of practice from someone else and just show up - do it.

I walked on a Michigan in the mid 90s (yeah, I was in over my head - no doubt), but I was persistent, trained with athletes who were recruited to attend other D1 schools and continued to contact the coaching staff as much as possible. I also had a former thrower at Michigan who was one of my high school coaches contact one of his former coaches as well about me. I finally found out what I needed to know, walked on, and well the rest was history (until injuries got the best of me).

Good luck.

Why would they reveal that?