Why do so many HS coaches treat XC and Track as primarily team sports

AD's evaluate coaches on their won-loss records. The team comes before the individual. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

But this is bad for the indivudals development and for the sport in general. Correct? Our system is not set-up for the development of the individual but for silly high school team success. Ultimately this is bad for the sport.

The team aspect is GOOD for the sport. It helps attract more young athletes and the excitement keeps them involved so they develop.

Why single out HS? What about college and club teams?

Do we have to rename our Olympic 'team'?

funding

It's treated as a team sport in schools because that's what it 's been made into. It's what you sign on for when you go that first meeting for the cross country or track teams. If someone wanted to pursue the sport without the team aspect there are plenty of opportunities to do so without joining the team. You'd be free to run the races you want and train how and when you want to.

Most high school coaches I have known take pride in both their team's achievements and in outstanding individual athletes that they have helped to excel. A good coach will try and balance things out, and not make his or her distance runners run 4 events at every single meet.

In part, I think you can blame a state's qualifying procedures for this girl's failure to make it to the state meet - not all states use a regional meet to qualify for state. Some states use automatic and provisional qualifying times, and these can be achieved at any meet over the course of the season, as long as the meet uses automatic timing, etc. That is a fairer system.

It is unfortunate that this girl failed to qualify for state. To look on the bright side, if she is trying to run in college, most college coaches are just going to look at her best times and it will not really be a big deal to them whether she was a state champion or not - if the girl has a coach or family who is able to help her, she can go to some of the big regional or national meets and just run her main event - meets like Arcadia, or post-season ones like New Balance Nationals or the Midwest Distance Gala, or many others.

Don't they limit the number of events a kid can run? I know in my state way back if you ran the 3200 you were limited to one more event.

I agree with this. To be fair, in high school, winning our league and sectional meets as a team was very important to us.

Though track and cross are more individual, they are still team sports, and they keep track of team points for a reason. My experience has been that kids buy in to the team aspect of it as well, and it is an important part of the sport. Sometimes it is a difficult decision as a coach. You may have a kid that can score in the 100, 200, and 400, but it will take a lot of of him so it can be a difficult decision.

I am really not that impressed when someone tells me they won state with their team! I am more impressed with individual winning. Winning on your own is a lot harder than team, no one to blame. I think it should always be about what is best for the individual, and then the team.

At the end of the year, when it's Regionals or the State Meet I think the coach's responsibility is to put his athletes into position for their best performance. If the team wins or places high, ever better.

During the season the team can take top priority at various invitationals and dual meets.

If you are not treating XC as a team sport you are either on a terrible team or you are approaching it wrong.

Track, I agree, it is individual in nature and the team score is secondary. You can go after PRs, place highly in races all for your own glory and if you score some points for the team, fine. That shouldn't have been your goal.

Cross country is a team sport with that team score being of the upmost importance, how you do as an individual only matters in how you helped your team. Time doesn't matter at all in cross country (wish more HS kids realized this) it is only about how many people from other teams you beat and that directly impacts your performance as a team.

I don't agree with the coach's decision in your example - surely he had someone else who could run in at least a couple of those other events - but they are team sports.

Emphasizing the team aspect also probably leads to the best results and experience for most of the kids most of the time. If you have a special athlete who is significantly better than everyone else it's harder to balance things but you can't run the program only for the benefit of a star athlete.

don't care wrote:

I am really not that impressed when someone tells me they won state with their team! I am more impressed with individual winning. Winning on your own is a lot harder than team, no one to blame. I think it should always be about what is best for the individual, and then the team.

Winning on your own is NOT harder than as a team. Team winning generally requires multiple team members to perform well, not just one.

Dennis Reynolds wrote:

Cross country is a team sport with that team score being of the upmost importance, how you do as an individual only matters in how you helped your team.

Before someone corrects me, obvious exception is when you qualify for postseason meets individually because you are on a bad team.

You do what you can for the team, but always the most for your future, in my opinion, sort of. It should be a little compromise! If you are the only really talented kid at your school, posting national times. Should you really wear yourself out winning medals for kids who might not work as hard?

I used to feel the same way. However, in 14 years of coaching HS track and Cross, I've changed my viewpoint.

1. Most kids will get way more motivated to work hard for the team rather than for themselves.

2. Only 1 or 2 kids can be top dogs, everyone else has to suck hind tit. It is really hard to get kids to buy into the whole concept of running to beat a personal best time. Most of them want to win, or place high, or something. If I can get my 7th man in cross to buy into the team concept and understand that he can still help us out by displacing other runners, then I'm going to have a more motivated kid. If I can get my 5th or 6th best miler to run his guts out to place in the top 6 at our league meet and pick up a point for the team, he will be happy, because he has contributed to something greater than himself.

3. My #1 girl missed the state meet last year because she had run the 800,1600,3200,300h at our league meet, then ran the 800,1600,4x400 at our divisional meet. She was outkicked at our section meet by .03 seconds in the 1600. She ran those races because she wanted to help the team win a league and divisional title. I don't know how she would have felt if she didn't run those races and the team lost, but I know that she was very excited to help to hang banners up in the gym. Those banners will be up there 20 years from now when her kids are getting ready to go to our school. There wouldn't be a banner for her making the state meet as an individual, nor even if she had taken home a state title (a tall order against the Harvard Westlake girls).

Don't get me wrong. We still emphasize personal improvement and individual success, but I truly believe that kids will go beyond themselves if there is a team aspect involved.