Best way to make track more popular in a school

what about getting some reward for the best trainers. Get someone famous in to train them. get videos up of them training. have a mile challenge or a sprint challenge for all years. get this working with you pe teachers.

... good, consistent coaching is the answer. It won't happen quickly. If you know your stuff, can teach the knowledge at an age appropriate level, and you respect your athletes, things happen. Don't worry about the lazy ones. Let them go. I'd rather have 25 dedicated, relatively slow, smart freshman to start than 25 unreliable, reasonably talented, all conference capable junior/senior soccer and football players. You might suck for a few years but eventually one or more of those freshman will break through and then you capitalize on that success. Think long term highly successful process, not short term, above average product.

Put the time in with the freshman.

I've seen other threads on this, and one suggestion that I liked was making it seem like a privilege and challenge to be on the team. If kids think it's difficult and tough, they might think it's cool since not everybody can meet the challenge

Measured loops with records for each year.

The freshman record on the 4 mile loop is 23:30.

The sophomore record on the 4 mile loop is 22:30.

And so on.

Keep these records posted and make training/practice competitive.

try and organise enough races that they constantly have a goal to reach towards

The engine that has made the United States of American the #1 Track and Field Team in the world is the "relays" track meets.

Texas Relays, Kansas Relays, Drake Relays, Penn Relays, and Mt Sac Relays are the five showcase track and field meets in the United States.

These relay trac meets made Austin, Lawrence, Des Moines, Pennsylvania, and Los Angeles the track and field centers of the United States because they developed a gargantuan base of coaches and athletes that stretch across the nation and across time for generations and generations.

Many colleges have copied the relays model and have open meets that accomodate athletes.

Texas, Kansas, Drake, and Penn are so popular, it takes days to run all the competitions, and they still have to turn wonderful athletes away it's so packed.

Mt Sac Relays uses multiple facilities and accomodates everyone.

Now do you know what you got to do ?

No copy of the letter. I wrote a different letter every year. One year I wrote it, our high school program had just had a cc kid be valedictorian of the class for four straight years so I mentioned that! Two had 36 on act test. We are talking about a graduating class of around 700 kids so it was a big deal to be #1 academically and all state in cc and track. The letters I wrote to parents were to kids going into 7th and 8th grade when it is not too late to get kids who don't like the traditional team sports but are academically talented. My head coach always laughed and said, "Every time you see a skinny girl with braces carrying a violin, you ask them to come out for track and cross country"! He was totally right! Five girls like that with a few yeas of miles under there belts won him a state title and lots of trophies.

Back to your main question, I did not quote national statistics but instead threw in some academic facts about our program. GPA was 3.9 for the girls team and 3.6 range for the boys. Lots of valedictorians and salutatorians, things like that.

Sorry it took me so long to get back. I usually do not return to threads. Keep us posted how it goes, Coach.

Band kids make great distance runners but the fall marching season and cc meets usually has quite a few conflicts. A kid can do both if his/her parents, the coach, the kid, and the band instructor have an agreement on how conflicts will be resolved, ahead of time. Our best band dandy/runner would march one saturday and run the next, which probably kept her fresher for the final meets of the season.

Honorable mention

First, recruit a cool female teacher as your assistant. Somebody trendy girls can relate to. Have her, not you, approach the popular girls about running cros country. She can lay it out as a way to improve their figure, make clothes look better, meet boys from other schools, etc. If she can get a couple of them to join, begin advertising the hell out of your program around school using pictures of the team and watch the kids flock to the program.

It may sound sexist and shallow, but it's what kids that age care about. Young boys and girls are desperate to hang with the popular girls in school.