Simmer down, coach wrote:
Aren't you overestimating your importance slightly? I realize the temptation to elevate yourself but you are simply their athletics coach. You're not their principal, you're not their teacher, and you're certainly not their parent.
Stick to what your know and what you are supposed to do and let the administrators and guidance counsellors deal with any substance issues.
As a coach and teacher, and I'll assume that based on your now ability to write a coherent, grammatical statement, you believe that the only purpose to high school sports is to make the kids a few seconds per mile faster?
This sport, even more than most sports, is completely inconsequential. Go to an average regular season high school football or basketball game and listen to the FANS talk about the players, the coaches, the schools, the strategies and the play calling. Go to a regular season cross country meet, and try to find anyone watching who is not running that day or is not related to a runner.
If you get a chance, talk to any one of the thousands of American adults making hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars playing their sport professionally. How many Americans in the whole country make $100,000 or more running? Not many more than the Republican Party has presidential candidates in a debate. As well, almost every kid I know with a D1 football or basketball scholarship got a full. Very, very few runners ever get a full.
Cross Country? As a sport, no one except the prarticipants care, and even then, many times the kids don't care all that much.
Unless the cross athletes learn the virtues of self-sacrifice and to enjoy the shared sacrifice, it will be tough to build a great program. Joe Six Pack will not be talking about the meet on Monday at the jobsite. Maybe that boy who runs 75 miles a week can get a few thousand dollars in scholarship money, but even if he's a state champion, the pool of average citizens who know his name will be tiny.
Endurance training builds better blood flow to the brain and can produce smarter kids. It can make a mediocre athlete realize that the only thing holding them back is how hard they are willing to work. The kids who work their asses off together in an obscure sport can enjoy the satisfaction that comes with the resulting camaraderie. Girls will build bone density that they will need as they age. The boys and the girls will develop thinner, more healthy physiques. If they get tough enough, they develop the virtue of courage, as every race will have a point where the bell rings and the hurting begins.
When kids really buy in, they are more likely to adopt a healthy lifestyle in all areas of their lives, including diet, sleep and avoiding drugs and alcohol. Those kids realize that he or she is not denying themselves anything. They are simply choosing a better lifestyle.
If you are not teaching life lessons as well as holding the stopwatch and driving the bus, you are missing out on the most satisfying part of coaching.