Washington and Lee University XC/Track program-- Anyone know anything?

yeah. i talked the the coach. hes kind weird but a nice guy. they follow daniels. the team is decent but nothing special. i liked the coach/team but not the school

Bump because I was interested in applying there too

I went to a rival school. Its a good academic school and looks like a good place to train. Very hilly and they have some trails on and near campus. The coach has probably changed since I was around but I know their girls' team are usually better than their guys' team.

firefly wrote:

yeah. i talked the the coach. hes kind weird but a nice guy. they follow daniels. the team is decent but nothing special. i liked the coach/team but not the school

What's wrong with the school? Academics are real solid.

very southern style and proper. they go to school well into june (trimesters). too small for me

Senior, are you male or female? They have two different coaches because their men's and women's XC programs are completely separate. The two coaches are pretty different, but both good in their own, unique ways.

I graduated from there (after transferring) five years ago, so can only really comment on my time there and a little after. First you should say if you're a guy or girl though, because for cross country the coaches are different and they use very different approaches. For a D3 team we were okay on both the men's and women's sides, won the conference both years and finished fairly high in a weak region.

I know Coach Hoey and his wife and have known them for a long time. You will find them wonderful people to work with and very good coaches. I would send my chlidren there to work with them. (I am a few years older then they are.)

IT is a nice private school with a good reputation.

I'm male. What type of times would they expect to make the team?

Like most D3 schools, anyone who wants to run on the team can, provided of course you show up for practice and take it seriously. To be a scoring member, that's a different story. My last season, our top 5 (when healthy) would all have been capable of running sub-16 for 5k, but from what I can tell based on the last couple years' results, running a sub-17 may get you on the top 5 now. One thing that was a little frustrating was not getting the opportunity to run on "fast" courses during the course of the year (although that may have changed). My first year I didn't break 27 until regions and 26 until nationals, which by most standards weren't even considered "fast," so if you weren't on the traveling squad your "PR" would be about two minutes slower than on a flat course. Cross country shouldn't be about time though, and no matter where you go you should keep that in mind when you're comparing the "performance lists" that come out.

What you should know training-wise is that Coach Tucker likes to follow more or less a Daniels approach, but he's flexible and takes input from the team. He'll have everyone set mileage targets, and unless you're injured/injury prone he wants everyone averaging at least 50 miles a week coming into the season. During the season, expect to do one hard interval session of 800-mile repeats per week as well as one threshold session. The volume goes down progressively throughout the course of the year. Also, a lot of the workouts are along the river (on the home course) or on a local trail, so that keeps it interesting. If you're not from there, the weather in Virginia is great during the season by the way.

The team chemistry was also pretty good and a lot of us hung out together regularly after practice. Most guys belonged to one of two fraternities, which helped reinforce the cohesion even more, but there's not really any pressure to do that. Don't expect your professors to say "good luck at your meet" to the cross country guys on Friday afternoon at most big schools, but that would definitely happen at W&L. Sometimes professors would even come out to the home meets, so there was definitely a lot of support and the university has a very strong sense of community.

On the track side, Kris and Nate Hoey took over the program 7 years ago, and as far as I know the overall track performance (in the conference) has gotten better during that time. I don't follow it as closely though. Kris coaches both the guys' and girls' distance teams, and I think the guys have tended to have better results recently in the mid-distances than in longer distance. I think part of that is because she has people doing less mileage/higher intensity than in the fall. Personally I preferred Coach Tucker's training methods as they aligned more closely to what I'd done before joining the team, but Kris (as a former national-class runner) knows what she's talking about as well. Both Kris and Nate are very, very nice, conscientious people (as is Coach Tucker) and have put a lot of effort into improving the program.

Finally, the school itself. Southern, with a sort of "preppy" feel - this is why I didn't apply straight out of high school. You will definitely get to understand what is meant by the word "fratty". That said, you don't have to be into that scene to enjoy life there, in fact the administration has made a very conscious effort the last several years to improve the non-frat or "GDI" experience. But don't dismiss the idea of joining a frat, even if it's something you're not too keen on, and at least stick your neck out there. Then if you decide it's not for you that's fine, but at least you checked it out and hopefully made a few friends. W&L is an awesome place to go for networking into jobs (which I unfortunately never availed myself of), and all the top law/med schools hold it in high regard. Out of the guys from the team when I was there, I think three of us are now in banking, at least a couple went to med school and some to other grad programs, one to law school, and at least one in consulting. If you apply yourself, maybe do internships/summer research, you will have a lot of opportunities.