Bitter Coach wrote:
"Come track season, however, Nacouzi was injured and when healthy didn’t practice or race most of the season. Sell said she allowed Nacouzi to run at the league finals, where she finished second, but not at the NCS meet because she missed two months of practice."
The coach keeps getting the girl injured, shredded knee already in highschool, and only runs her at the league meet for the coaches benefit because she wants petty revenge for the girl getting healthy by avoiding her coaching. Great coach.
States need to allow students to run at the district/regional/state meets without being part of their school's team.
No, states do not need to allow students to run at the district/regional/state meets without being part of their school's team. They don't.
Cross-country is a team sport. It has developed as a team sport over the past 100+ years in this country and around the world. Footlocker (a wonderful event) is an obvious exception to this.
Some coaches need to be better coaches, but the system works for almost everyone, most of whom (a) will not run in college or (b) will not compete after college. And that's fine. High school athletics do much more to develop young people into healthy, motivated, and dedicated adults than they do to develop the next Olympic team. I would rather see a high school athletics program that nurtures and challenges young people as people than one that wins Olympic medals.
Would you let an independently coached/trained runner from Oregon compete at the Pac-10 championships or the West Regional for NCAAs independent of his/her team?
I competed against individuals when I was in high school. It's because their schools had no teams, either for that season individually or at all. They ran because they loved running, but every single kid I can think of in that situation became so much happier once his/her school started a team/expanded into more seasons.
When I was in school, the rules were simple: show up to practice or you didn't compete. You needed a certain number of practices to race, and a certain amount of races to compete in any post-season competitions. This makes sense -- this actually protects athletes from coaches who could exploit an injured top athlete to win at all costs.
When my teammates or I were injured, we still came to practice. Any injured athlete had to check in with the coach and receive a modified workout plan. Of course our coach tailored things for us -- but he tailored our workout plans, not his expectations with regards to attendance or commitment. Some times it was the weight room. Some times it was hours of icing. Some times it was a physical therapy appointment. For our injured team captain in his last season, it was coaching the rest of the hurdlers. If the injury was bad enough, the season ended because our health came first. No one trained on their own through an injury and expected special treatment.
My school has produced state champions, Olympic trials qualifiers, NCAA All-Americans, and more state meet medals than I can count. And that's really nice. But it's comparatively unimportant.
High school is a critical time for development for youth, and good coaches -- really good coaches -- have to be educators first.