How to get my kid to stop apologizing for running cross country

You can't teach self confidence.

Show him this movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpM71RDQUQk

If your team had a coach that was any good whatsoever, this wouldn't be a problem. Most likely, the coach also agrees - and further influences your son - that XC is a lesser sport. That is an unfair generalization to many HS coaches who read Letsrun and actually give a damn, but they know that they are the vast minority of HS XC coaches.

Hopefully at some point, your encouragement along with your son's own honest effort and improvement will start to open his eyes that running is actually amongst the greatest of physical disciplines.

Does he run track? Do any of his friends?

When I was a freshman, during late January of indoor track, we were all running to the track to warmup. A group of football/basketball players and cheerleaders who were waiting for basketball/cheer practice to start started heckling the group of dorky freshman runners.

One of our captains, a hurdler, who started for the football football, replied that he had $20 that said any of those freshmen could beat the loudmouth for 2 laps of the track on the first day of spring practice. When the heckler replied, the captain ended it, to peals of cheerleader laughter, by saying the good old standby, "Our punishment is their sport."

The point is if they really are his buddies then he should get them to go out for track to stay in shape. When he crushes them in practice, their pedestals will be gone.

akornfv897g wrote:

The point is if they really are his buddies then he should get them to go out for track to stay in shape. When he crushes them in practice, their pedestals will be gone.

I always got a kick out of seeing football players vomiting at track practice.

As a middle distance runner, I was often part of the 4x400 team. I can remember multiple examples of the sprint coach (who was also the head football coach) grabbing me when some of his sprinters slacking off in practice. He'd throw me into their practice and say if this kid beats anyone, you're ass is grass. Of course, they'd go as hard as they could to beat me, and usually would. Then he'd shout "again!" and the looks of pride would change to 'uh oh.' After a few 200m repeats, I'd be burning these guys. Coach would have some choice words for them, and would dismiss me to go back to running 800m repeats or off to a 5 mile run or whatever. The looks on the sprinters' faces were priceless!

That coach helped us mid/distance guys earn a lot of respect among the sports, even though he wasn't our direct coach.

Football is for the kids who lack the endurance to make the XC squad.

My senior year, the kid who was going to be the starting running back for the football team the next year according to the depth chart turned out to be a guy who ran the 600 in winter track and the 400 in spring track. Given how bad our football team was at that point that wasn't saying much.

My buddy had been the best distance runner in the school for 3 years at that point and so one week he ran the 600 and beat the running back by 2 seconds. The next week, I decided to run the 600. When I took off from the gun, the running back had a choice to make, either lay it all out there or lose by 5+ seconds to another what he though of as inferior distance runner.

He chose to lay it out. He ended up out leaning me, not that I had any idea of how to lean. He beat his time from the week before by more than 5 seconds. He ended up finishing 4th in the state after previously not even having run a qualifying time. He credited me with teaching him how to race.

Years later, he told my parents the story of what happened the next fall at football practice. That fall was the turning point of football at our school. That fall two freshman running backs went out for the team and changed the team from never glimpsing .500 to undefeated their last 3 years of HS, both going on to play for major college teams. However, before they started winning, they had to get through the running back I had taught how to race.

When he saw them, the senior new he was smaller, slower and was much less coordinated than either of them. He knew, by the end of the preseason, they would be the ones on the field not him. He decided that before that happened, he would teach them how to work. The football coach noticed all of his hard work during preseason and let him start the first game because he was a senior. After the first set of downs led to 3 and punt, he never played another meaningful down all season. When they signed their letters of intent, both running backs pointed to that senior running back as the person with the biggest impact on their HS careers. The running back told my parents it had really started in a winter track 600.

That's actually a pretty cool story.

Good luck. I know a girl that was a good runner in HS who told me she almost didn't do it as it was embarrassing to be good at.

i find this whole thing bizarre. sounds like your kid's friends are just douche bags. Also I can't imagine having so little self-confidence to feel embarrassed about the sport you do.

But it is lower on the totem pole. The guys who play football are the king in school and they're treated as such by boys and girls. ANYONE can run cross country. You could be a fatso and run.

Jamin's Dad wrote:

But it is lower on the totem pole. The guys who play football are the king in school and they're treated as such by boys and girls. ANYONE can run cross country. You could be a fatso and run.

This is the inescapable truth.

Now there are lots of untalented kids who make the football team and never see the field, but they get to wear jerseys on game days and say they are football players.

I was a football/track guy in HS. I loved track, and I loved being a football player. I think if the notoriety had been reversed I wouldn't have played more than a year or two of HS football. Instead, it took 'til my sophomore season of college football to realize I really didn't like playing - or at least enough to keep doing it.

I also played in an era where most of us were multi-sport athletes, so for about half of us on the football team, the XC guys were our teammates from track. They did on-campus dual meets for XC then, and we would stop football practice to cheer for the XC guys during the Varsity race.

With my XC teams, we would address the issue head on and say "If you want the attention that football players get, you need to play football".

In its place, we tried to create our own system of affirmation. We would send results directly to teachers (sometimes with video) and they would often honor kids in class and show the videos. Within the team, we'd honor PR's and big year to year improvements, with the top senior athletes leading the honors for the younger athletes.

We would also do team things that football didn't get to do. We had a Mammoth training camp and would travel overnight to a meet in both XC and track seasons.

And we won way more than football did. That didn't help much, and in fact, the administration seemed to resent that we were having greater success than the "main" sport.

One other thing we did in track (but not XC) that raised the profile of our team - we made cuts. Kids will value something others are excluded from.

Among the coaches, we would constantly remind ourselves to never internalize the second (third?) tier status that XC. We when we trained and raced, we tried to communicate to our athletes that this was the most important thing we could be doing.

These days, fewer football players participate in track, so that team connection doesn't happen as much as it did. But I'd also suggest that changes in XC culture have affected this.

Over the ten years I've been around, I've heard more and more XC/distance coaches talk about track season as something you get through, and that the real season is XC. The diversity of a track team is a burden rather than and opportunity, with XC coach and kids anxious to get back to "our kind of people" in the Fall.

This is a minor thing, but it's one that we can control.

Oh, and teenagers care a lot about what people think. So, um, yeah...

It does go back to the coach and how he approaches the team. Does he just see it as a good time for all, a place for other sports to send their kids to stay in shape, a place for kids to lose weight, or does he approach it as a competitive sport?

It's incumbent on HIM to market and promote the sport that way at the school. To make sure the good performances by the team and individual runners are recognized in morning announcements, assemblies, bulletin boards, web pages, etc..

If he approaches it as a joke the kids will pick up on it quickly. Your problem is the coach.

ataglance wrote:

It does go back to the coach and how he approaches the team. Does he just see it as a good time for all, a place for other sports to send their kids to stay in shape, a place for kids to lose weight, or does he approach it as a competitive sport?

It's incumbent on HIM to market and promote the sport that way at the school. To make sure the good performances by the team and individual runners are recognized in morning announcements, assemblies, bulletin boards, web pages, etc..

If he approaches it as a joke the kids will pick up on it quickly. Your problem is the coach.

Exactly.

And this reminds of one more thing... athletes.

We always called our athletes "athletes" - never runners. Athletes - I think it made a difference.

CCintheEast wrote:

....... I can tell he has a hard time dealing with cross country, being the low rung of sports at his high school. Most of his friends are football & hockey players.

Wait, what? Hockey is a "high rung" sport at his school. Huh? Are you Canadian? No self-respecting U.S. H.S. could care about hockey. Your son should be mocking the hockey players.

The Michael Landon of TV Fame was a nationally ranked Javelin thrower in HS and at USC before breaking into his tremendous show biz career.

whatsmyname wrote:

CCintheEast wrote:

....... I can tell he has a hard time dealing with cross country, being the low rung of sports at his high school. Most of his friends are football & hockey players.

Wait, what? Hockey is a "high rung" sport at his school. Huh? Are you Canadian? No self-respecting U.S. H.S. could care about hockey. Your son should be mocking the hockey players.

Hockey is huge in the northeast.

This happened at my school, track and XC teams were not looked highly upon, even some of the popular kids who could have been great runners would not think of joining. I did it because I loved running, because it was great to be out there vs. yourself, because when I moved on to any other sport in the off season I was in so much better shape than those girls who played softball etc and would outrun them down any field or court.

Even though our teams were successful (state champs one year) we were never supported by the school or town and though local football coaches at other schools would encourage their athletes to join track to improve speed and strength, ours would not. We were largely ignored but that fueled our fire to do better!

Unfortunately it is what it is and HS can be tough with bullying, kids comments etc but that being said some of the folks you meet running can be some of the best people you will ever know. They will be your closest friends who know what it's like to toe the line with you and give everything they have for your team. The ones who don't know how to quit, the ones you really want in your corner.

And worst case, just tell them that in 10 yrs all those friends who thought it wasn't cool to be a runner will be training for 5Ks trying to lose their freshman 15 from college, or bragging about cross fit . . . but until then he can do what he loves and when it comes time for the gym mile, just run past them all and smile!