Matt S wrote:
Senior year is fast approaching. I'll do whatever I can to get out and contend with the best.
Nice job. I like this kid. Perfect example of how Cross Country gives a runner a chance to make something of himself, despite where some other coaches may have slotted him as a Freshman with a given time trial result. Good luck to you, Matt S.
Being on the cross country team did not make him the CEO of Nike....also they aren't elitist standards pretty much every high school sport has try-outs and if you don't meet the coaches standards you don't make the team...how is that not fair?
My college team was one of the top programs in the country. We let anyone come out for cross country if they wanted. All they had to do is show up every day. They became the so-called "F-Troop". One of the F-Troopers is now the CEO of Nike. With your elitist standards he wouldn't have been allowed to try out for the team.[/quote]
It's dumb. Give kids and opportunity to do athletics and a social outlet.
I'd argue that cross country has the greatest impact upon youth out of all sports. Consider the kids who have done cross country on your team who wouldn't have made the cut in any other sport. Think of how beneficial giving those kids a team and an outlet has been to their lives.
Being on a team is huge, it's a family and it's about being a part of something bigger than yourself. Having a purpose. I promise you that most every kid brings something to the team other than a number or time. And short of delinquents I see no reason to cut them. Kids are sedentary these days, we should be encouraging exercise and fitness. Who knows, you may find some hidden talent.
Total agreement with Malmo. Your coach sucks. One of my greatest pleasures as a coach is seeing a kid who comes out and can't even run 3 miles in a row... stick with it all season and break 25 or even 30 at the end. The joy in their faces when they've accomplished something they didn't think they could do is priceless. It gives them that lightbulb moment when they realize that this theory works in real life, too.
Oh.. and I had a kid who didn't break 22 his freshman year wind up running low 16's and 9:35 by his senior year, so you never know when you might have a diamond in the rough.
Emo Teddy wrote:
Being on the cross country team did not make him the CEO of Nike...
You fail at reading comprehension. That's OK, that's par for the course here.
Just read the first post but I just wanted to state that at my first XC meet I ran 23:30. 6 months later I ran a 4:50 mile. The following XC season I was captain and ran 17:00. Your coach is an idiot.
I went to a very good XC high school and our teams were huge - no cuts. Boys and girls combined was well over 150 runners.
Cuts wouldn't have effected me since I matured really early (didn't grow much once I got to high school - however I never was a superstar either), and from my view as consistent 3-5 runner, I saw so many kids go from exceedingly slow to very fast. We had one guy who I think (could be wrong) was slower than 23:00 - anyway he wasn't even close to 20:00 freshman year, that's for sure. Sophomore year this guy had a huge growth spurt, passed me in the last race of the season and by senior year was consistently sub 16, with a PR in the low 15s with great times on the track as well.
Bottom line: you can have a very competitive, national caliber XC program at the varsity level that at the same time is open to the slowest runners.
In your case, OP, I'm not sure what you can do about it. Make sure you get in the training this summer, I guess.
You have much more talent than I do. It took me a bit of work to dip under 20 minutes.
And... I actually do think that my sport is a community romp with a bunch of my friends, many untalented. It was the community thing that made us faster, and more talented.
I haven't read the whole thread, only what malmo had to say. He can be a bit mouthy but I like him personally but I'm not just agreeing him because of that.
This is basically the "final nail in the coffin" for me to quit my dream-job in Japan, a corporate team coach. Our head coach set out a target time for this young girl, can't remember the exact time, 17:30 or something like that. She missed it by 2 seconds. Sure, it's a corporate team; but it's the coach's job to make them run the target time.
It is what "coach who sucks" does--they set up a standard time and use it to weed out runners. A good coach would make those slow runners to clear whatever the standard time may be.
I actually see this far too often, especially at letsrun.com, that far too many people only see what is right now. Who's at the top right now and what's he/she doing. But what really matters is what they will be and what makes them what they can be.
The school district I coach for can only supply one bus/gender for away meets, so we can't travel with more than 44 athletes. We don't cut kids, but we use a sliding scale (based on years of experience) in terms of a "minimum" to make the traveling squad. All athletes still compete at all home meets. The standards are roughly (I don't have the list in front of me) ...
1st year: 24:00
2nd year: 22:00
3rd year: 20:30
4th year: 19:00
We only apply the standards in years that we have an abundance of kids; I think we have used this policy twice in the past 15 years.
Cutting in XC is just plain dumb; if we started a thread asking for stories about kids who didn't break 8:00 pace as frosh and then made some sort of an All-State team the thread would be silly long.
NobbyH wrote:
This is basically the "final nail in the coffin" for me to quit my dream-job in Japan, a corporate team coach.
Quitter!
It would take more guts to stay and try and change the system from the inside.
Who the hell is Gary? This has been bothering me for days.
Harry R. Groves always did it the right way at PSU. It was like a calling to him. Everyone who was willing to do the work was part of the team. And they truly were part of the team. We probably had the most willing group of top-notch talent share their "team" with the walk-ons (like me). Very little friction involved between the "haves" and the "have- nots". The list of walk-ons who contributed or even became All-Americans is quite large. The list of walk-ons that became tops in their field of employment is way larger.
Coach put it best in the interview I did with him at the Alumni Reunion last month. "Athletics (track and field) is for education and recreation, nothing else. Winning is important only in that you learn more."
High School coaches should keep that in mind.
lllll wrote:
Who the hell is Gary? This has been bothering me for days.
ment Gerry, screwed up on the name....that was definitely my bad. wasn't thinking, but thats not the point of this thread
trololol wrote:
ment Gerry
The coach should have a 10 mile time trial the first day. Everyone who can't set a PR for the first mile and the first 5k and then keep hammering for the full 10 miles is cut!
SomeCoach wrote:
The school district I coach for can only supply one bus/gender for away meets, so we can't travel with more than 44 athletes. We don't cut kids, but we use a sliding scale (based on years of experience) in terms of a "minimum" to make the traveling squad. All athletes still compete at all home meets. The standards are roughly (I don't have the list in front of me) ...
1st year: 24:00
2nd year: 22:00
3rd year: 20:30
4th year: 19:00
We only apply the standards in years that we have an abundance of kids; I think we have used this policy twice in the past 15 years.
Cutting in XC is just plain dumb; if we started a thread asking for stories about kids who didn't break 8:00 pace as frosh and then made some sort of an All-State team the thread would be silly long.
Having standards in place for determining who gets to travel is a fine idea. It gives the kids a goal, but not an ultimatum. My guess is that even though those standards are in place, anyone can still come to practice after school and train through the season, hoping to get to that traveling standard? That's called motivation.
If you make the traveling standard, you make the bus. Those standards are based on our home course, so those years we've used the standards you should see those kids just killing themselves to make the time; it's an awesome motivator. In addition, when we get 50+ sign-ups in the fall, our summer mileage totals are always better.
agree with everyone saying: take everyone and see how it shakes out.
Just wanted to add one point: having a "no cut (tryout) policy" is a different thing than never cutting. Though I am personally pretty flexible on the matter, it's well within a coach's right to throw someone off the team who doesn't show up consistently and never has a good reason.
I know some coaches who won't let athletes on the team if they EVER have ANY conflict (work, academic programs, volunteering, whatever). I can't really agree with them. I'll take an 80% commitment when you're doing something else useful with your time the other 20%. The kids who really care will run on their own or become so obsessed with track they'll change their other commitments.
That's just my style I guess. It seems to work--we've won some local team titles, lots of individual titles. Definitely more "per capita" than some of the hard-ass coaches. Plus it makes my life a lot less stressful -- less yelling at people. And in my view, you might as well be self-directed. I'll motivate you to show up and motivate you when you show up, but that doesn't mean it always works! Still, kids can benefit from running and a lot start having success and then go at the sport full bore.
This may have been mentioned before, but as long as a kid is willing to show up to practice every day with a decent attitude, they should be on the team. PR's shouldn't matter.
Running over the summer should be treated with rewards, not punishments if they choose not to run. The most motivated kids will run during the summer, and the others can be enticed by making them members of the 500 mile club or whatever.
Reading this thread has taken me back to when I started the CC program at Hughson.
When I was hired, we had no team, but a girl that was pretty good and was training with a rival school because we didn't have a program (Riverbank High, of German Fernandez fame). Our football team had just won the state championship and of 92 boys in the freshman class, 63 went out for football. I coached freshman footabll (I told them I could coach pigskin, because I really needed a teaching job) that first year, but decided to start the CC program my second year.
My first year with the team looked like this:
#1 runner, girl who had run 10:40 (3200)for me the previous season in track
#2 runner, boy who had run 12:05 as a frosh during previous season
#3 runner, boy who had run 5:48 (1600) previous season as a frosh.
Those were my only 3 kids who were "serious" runners. The rest of the team was made up, more or less, of stoners and druggies who thought it was cool to do "un-football". We went to our first meet and my entire varsity team was last in a field of 180+ runners. I think I had one boy place in the 150s (my motivated sophomores ran in the sophomores race that day). Up to that point, my "alternative lifestyle kids" had been ditching workouts and cutting runs short. I laid into them for their lack of effort and some of them actually started to come around. For league meets, I put my two dedicated sophomores onto the varsity squad and we went 3-4 during the dual meet season (I kept my entire team home from one meet during that time because they were still screwing around too much). By our league finals meet, we placed 4th in an 8 team league. My top sophomore boy ended up going 17:21 that year. Some of the stoners came through and we were OK that first season
The following year, we were 3rd in our league and placed 8th at our section meet. This was done with 4 kids from the previous year in our top 5. The worst culprits in the goofing off from the previous year had decided not to come back.
The 3rd year, we went 7-1 in league duals and lost to eventual state 4th place team Riverbank by 2 points at league finals. Team bombed at sectionals and only placed 4th.
Following year we placed 2nd at league and 3rd at section, qualifying for state
Following year we won league and sectionals and were top 10 at the state meet.
Each and every one of those years, we ended up counting on a kid that would have been cut by the OP's coaches standards. By his standards, I would have had a team of only 3 runners that first year.