Why didn' t you join your XC or track team in high school?

afraid of "how far they have to run"

Happy MLK Day!

I hated running, and I was really slow.

i didn't even know what xc was until my senior year when i started running.

ran track senior year.

nobody ever thought i'd be a good runner other than my parents. didn't play soccer after freshman year of high school, so nobody would've known if i would be good or not.

I didn't like the rah rah sports culture at my high school.

Played baseball & golf instead of track.

Didn't like the coach very much. He never established a personal connection (& neither did I... though probably more up to him since I was a kid).

Didn't understand that one could actually improve much through consistent running outside of cross country season.

Didn't like junior high experience of having to double the 1500m & 800m in the same meets.

I played skateboards and don't remember track or xc really being sports at my HS. I know they were there, but Naples was a football and baseball town as far as school sports went back then. Well, we had the National Champs for women's softball for awhile. That was pretty big 30 years ago. And swamp buggy races. That was huge.

I could have been good in soccer or swimming or tennis. I played all three at a high level before HS started.

We had eight people within 2 yrs of my grade play Div 1 soccer after 12 grade(two eventually went pro). Six people played Div 1 or 2 tennis (Two were pros, one was World Ranked - Todd Martin) and we had 8 swim on a D1 or D2 team (including Michigan, Purdue and the Navel Academy) and won the State Championship one year.

I could have done those three sports (Fall, Winter, Spring) and would have been good enough to play at a high level, make the State championships, etc.

Ever since 6th grade I wanted to run, and be good at it, and eventually run in college and go to meets like the Penn Relays, Dogwood Relays, Texas Relays, etc.

Swimming is very hard and (like running) is kind of its own reward, and you make great friendships. Tennis and soccer are more fun, much less of a grind, and more popular with most of the school. But I decided to forgo those in favor of running CC in the Fall, running 7 days a week in the winter, and run track in the spring. Once I did it, I never looked back with regret or thought I might change sports in the future.

Try picking up a copy of Newton's "Coaching CC Successfully"...

https://www.google.com/search?q=joe+newton+coaching+cross+country+successfully&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

... he has a few other books that were specifically about motivating people once you have them on the team. Newton is kind of over-the-top but you can use some of his tactics to get more people out and keep more of the kids once they do come out.

A lot of people don't join because of other sports they want to do instead. also xc is a little scary for how long they run. Sometimes runners will do track but not xc because its shorter. Xc is not as cool or as social soccer or volleyball.

reed wrote:

i didn't even know what xc was until my senior year when i started running.

I thought it was skiing, until about 1 month before I first joined.

Happy MLK Day!

1) Sports weren't the cool thing to do back in the heady mid-90s (but I still was on the crew team).

2) I didn't even know my school had an XC or track team until I looked in a yearbook during senior year.

I ran mid distance in track, but never ran XC because I played football in the fall. I never dropped football even though I was better at running for two reasons.

1) I did'nt know if I could mentally take three seasons of running every year. I loved track, but by the time I finished indoor and outdoor, I was ready to do something else for a few months.

2) My school's XC runners were a bunch of goofballs, and not in a good way. Football was competitive. Every player wanted to go out and win. You were expected to be passionate about the game. There was zero competitive spirit among the XC guys. They never qualified for states, and this failure didn't bother them one bit.

My second reason is probably more important. I managed to run year-round in college, so I probably could have done the same in high school if I'd really wanted to. But I could never be a member of a team where nobody cared about winning; where people got their @sses kicked and then proceeded to sit around laughing about how bad they were like sucking was cute and funny.

I guess the lesson for your purposes is that if you want athletes to come out for your sport, you need to create an atmosphere where people take the sport seriously. You need to foster competitiveness. No decent athlete wants to line up with six other guys who don't give a sh!t about winning.

2) My school's XC runners were a bunch of goofballs, and not in a good way. Football was competitive. Every player wanted to go out and win. You were expected to be passionate about the game. There was zero competitive spirit among the XC guys. They never qualified for states, and this failure didn't bother them one bit.

My second reason is probably more important. I managed to run year-round in college, so I probably could have done the same in high school if I'd really wanted to. But I could never be a member of a team where nobody cared about winning; where people got their @sses kicked and then proceeded to sit around laughing about how bad they were like sucking was cute and funny.

I guess the lesson for your purposes is that if you want athletes to come out for your sport, you need to create an atmosphere where people take the sport seriously. You need to foster competitiveness. No decent athlete wants to line up with six other guys who don't give a sh!t about winning.[/quote]

That's the story of my cross country team. Even though I didn't do football and stuck it out in CC

Fear of being cut if I went out for a team. Don't cut anyone. Sell it as a great way to supplement college apps. Find your target audience (skinny book worms, burned out soccer players) and go after them. The kids that won't make any team. You'll hit the jackpot with someone eventually. Cast a wide net. Eventually the right combination for winning will come along and then it's just maintaining that expectation.

And I had no idea what cross country was. Nobody trying to sell the team.

I was planning on going to the NBA until I figured out the odds were not good for a 5'8" guy with small hands and only slightly better than average hops.

I played hoops year round, but didn't have a spring sport, so I ran track in 9th grade. Ran on the JV, wasn't very good (certainly not compared to my success in bball), and the coaches didn't communicate at all. I never knew what races I was going to run in meets, was never told goals, or splits or final times, basically felt ignored. I got better during the season, and probably would have been ok in a couple of years, but the whole thing just seemed too haphazard and unorganized for me. The program was actually very strong (in our conference, not regionally or nationally or anything), so maybe the coaches just put their energy into the older/better guys, but I didn't run after that one year. One of my biggest regrets from HS...

I did it all for the Nookie

As a freshman in HS I didn't consider running because I viewed T&F athletes as super athletic and I was one of the guys picked almost last for teams in PE class. In spring PE my freshman year we had to run a mile fitness test and I ran 5:07 and beat the track guys. After that the coach recruited me hard to go out for the XC/track teams my sophomore year. I ended up having success beyond my expectations(state champ, 3:52 1500 in HS, college scholarship).

Skinny awkward kids may not know they can become very good runners. The best thing you can do is create a fun XC and T&F experience and as the running culture in your school builds then the kids will recruit for you.

I was trained at national level instead of participating in school track/XC. I performed 13:46 for 5000 metres in a road relay race and helped my country get third in an international junior event.

(1) It was the same season as tennis, which was my favorite sport.

(2) Cross country was where students went when their parents forced them to do a sport. There were no try-outs and no one took it seriously, as far as I know.

(3) I enjoyed running but feared competing.