AD told me I couldnt take select few to a top tier meet

remarkable: meanwhile, basketball and football and soccer and other sports, probably all other sports but xc, have cuts and a varsity-jv distinction.

One point is that they probably wouldn't get in or would cost a lot. Another is that in track you just don't know who can develop into a really good runner and by doing this kind of weeding out prior to the end of the season, you actually depress their potential (of course, in this case, the rest get to have their meet the night before, so that's fine). In college, the coach would send the top athletes down to Florida Relays while the rest would just run a 10k in Charleston. So, we probably wouldn't train as well with top runners gone and it probably deflated us. Yet, there was a lot more in the tank for many of us in the future. The post-season does more of this: good athletes get, say, three to four weeks more coaching (in fact, they get more coaching all the time in the programs I was in, which are in no way exceptional) and practice time than the others, so the gap only grows. It wouldn't be a bad idea in terms of athlete development to have all of the athletes continue to practice and compete in, say, more dual meets or intrasquad events, after they've bombed out of leagues or whatever.

coach1738 wrote:

Thoughts?

Tried to take 12 kids to a "varsity" only meet, so they could get exposed to some regional/state competition, but he shut it down because he was afraid of phone calls from the parents, and the backlash because we were "picking and choosing" certain kids.

Anyone ran into this? Should I be upset?

Tell him you entered everyone, these are the kids that qualified.

Is this your first invitational? I hate to say it but you've done a bad job explaining how track & field works to your AD. Also Id addressed how kids qualify for invitationals at the parent meeting why would they complain?

I think a lot of people are giving these various entities that the OP has to deal with way too much credit. Parents are not rational when they think their kid has been wronged. Unfortunately, administrators just do not want to deal with irrational and enraged parents because they don't think it is worth trying to talk them out of whatever got them all worked up. Welcome to the 21st Century. I feel for the OP, I come from a district where the PTA got a teacher fired for giving a kid detention because he skipped class for an optional football lifting session, I can only imagine the stuff that coaches have to deal with.

That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. My team splits off varsity and JV between two meets every week, it's normal. And in track, contrary to basketball for example, there is no such thing as picking and choosing because you have a concrete way to rank your athletes: the times they have run

all i gotta say is are you being the remy boys?

1738

Damn you beat me to it

Spin it in a way that you are not taking the kids so as to avoid their embarrassment. I did that with my AD and he agreed. However, it helped me out when I told him that we were setting standards to avoid the "social club" atmosphere of soccer and other silly sports like that. Because of a hazing incident where a fringe kid got beat up pretty bad, he felt that keeping the "outsiders" who will not buy into the program away would prevent legal messes in the future. Explain that to him, too and see if he then agrees.

Dr. Van Nostrand wrote:

Obvious troll. No AD would say this. There are cuts in every other sport

I actually had a parent call me when I cut her kid, saying "when I ran, they did not cut anybody." I could see an AD having the same ideas.

coach1738 wrote:

Thoughts?

Tried to take 12 kids to a "varsity" only meet, so they could get exposed to some regional/state competition, but he shut it down because he was afraid of phone calls from the parents, and the backlash because we were "picking and choosing" certain kids.

Anyone ran into this? Should I be upset?

Easy solution. Sign everyone up for the meet. Only take the kids that qualify for the meet. Tell the AD you wanted to take everyone but the meet denied their entry. If he has an issue, tell him to speak to the meet director.