Recruiting Help!

I cant answer your question but best of luck to you, keep up the running! hope you get some good answers here....

college coaches can't contact you until spring of your junior year. don't worry about college yet and just keep training. come back next year if you still have questions.

talk to older girls on your team as they go through the process so you will be prepared when you get to that point.

you can receive a full ride at some schools but you won't with those times. that is a great start for a freshman track season.

1) You will receive letters, but it is best to contact them yourself. You should wait until after junior year XC to do this.

2) It is possible to received a full ride, but this is rare. More likely like half. You can also get combination of athletic and academic to get near full if you are a good student.

The coach contacting thing is what really has me confused because some people say coaches cant contact you until junior year but last year two sophomore girls on my team(juniors now) received recruitment letters from several colleges. They did not talk on the phone to the coaches of course, they just got the letters. Should I expect to receive them with sophomore xc pr's or am I still not fast enough. The main reason why I want them is to get an idea of what schools are interested in me so I can narrow my college search.

They can send you letters as a sophmore, but not phone calls or emails. You shouldn't rely on letters from colleges because many colleges don't even send them. You should decide what colleges YOU are interested in. Learn about the college, the academics, and the team. If you like the school, and you are fast enough to run on the team, they will be interested in you.

You are fast enough NOW for many colleges to be interested, but if you say you only like Oregon and Stanford I'd say you need to look at more schools! If you are in Cali, you would look at Pac-10, Big West, and WCC schools.

Most universities send letters to juniors; it's possible that a race result erroneously listed these girls as juniors.

That said, you really shouldn't narrow down your college search by what letters you receive. Schools all across the board will send you recruitment packets. If you're good these will range from top level DI programs from around the country to the less competitive in-state programs. When you look to make a college choice you're going to really find out what programs YOU are most interested in based on criteria like:

*the competitiveness of the team

*the academic reputation of the school

*geographic proximity to home

*majors offered at the school

*expense (before getting a firm offer, you should know about how much they will be able to offer you)

Don't look at a college not sending you a packet as an indication that they're not interested in you. By the same token, don't take receiving a questionnaire from a school to mean that they plan on offering you anything. Ultimately, the best idea is to get out there and beat the bushes to find the schools you want to go to and make it happen. You can e-mail a coach during your junior year, and they are allowed to respond. Doing this and filling out the questionnaire which is usually posted on the team's site will demonstrate your interest to the coach.

There is so much information out there that we're not going to be able to tell you everything. (Although DI Athlete hit the nail right on the head). Some links to explore that might help give you a basic idea:

http://co.milesplit.com/articles/21864

(see links at the bottom of the page)

http://co.milesplit.com/articles/49089

http://www.talk.dyestat.com/archive/index.php/t-100720.html

http://rise.espn.go.com/track-and-xc/us/features/donna-recruiting/what-do-coaches-want-pt2.aspx