Parent wants talented runner to quit - need arguments to convince her otherwise

Thanks for the range of responses, everyone. There's some good doses of perspective for me, some helpful tips, and lots of the patented LRC forum "flavor". I will admit that my initial reaction to the situation was not giving the mother enough credit. Now that my head is straighter, I feel better prepared to create a positive solution for the student that satisfies the mother's concerns.

I think this is what I've got to aim for - set parameters for the kid to demonstrate she can improve her grades while still participating. It may be just a case of the daughter needing a "wake-up call" about her priorities. She's only a sophomore, and there's plenty of distractions. It's not unbelievable there are several things keeping her from her best schoolwork, and running needn't take all of the blame.

I can believe that there are other ways she could improve her school performance. These kids have their attention pulled in so many different directions, it's not a stretch to believe she could be frittering away time in a dozen different ways. Including things the mother might lump into "running" that aren't necessary or even beneficial to her participating in track/XC (e.g. trawling athletic dot net, which I know she is wont to do).

Do you have a source for "sports participation has been shown as a benefit on college applications?" That's something that I'd love the have available for the conversation.

Drum and bss wrote:

My HS GPA wasn't that great... 2.6, last year after taxes I cleared 650K.

Say it will look good on her college applications.

Say it teaches discipline and hard work. She just needs to learn how to channel it.

Say it's a source of self esteem.

But yeah, a 3.3 is seriously bad in almost any program even at the university level. Especially bad at the high school level.

Running isn't her future, so grades are paramount. I would just say though that if her grades suck now, removing running likely isn't the answer. She'll do something else in her free time.

Maybe the daughter has used running as an excuse not to do school work, and that's what the mom is concerned about.

I think you need to double down on listening to the mother's concerns even more than you already are. State that within some households a 3.3 GPA is seen as good and you as a coach aren't usually in a position to tell that student to buckle down on their academics. Now that you know that this mother wants/expects more from her child than a 3.3 you are glad to have this mother's buy-in so that you can push this girl to even better grades. Cross country, like academics, is a sport where what you get out of it is based on how much you put into it. Running and academics go hand-in-hand for a student athlete focused on consistent efforts and good results. There's no reason by senior year she can't have a better GPA and better race times. You're both trying to teach her the same mentality for tackling all of life's challenges because in the end a strong mindset of excellence is what will drive her forward, not just a long ago high school GPA or 800 PR.

Furious Ferret awaits wrote:

Where we are, 3.3 GPA is in the bottom 25% of the class but that may not be the case at other places

Still, it would be in the bottom 50%

4M graduates nationally so we are looking to fall behind roughly 2M students in college admissions

Can you say Top100 is out of range for us?

Right, lets look for a U with a Furious Ferret mascot and campuses at the (any) strip mall near you.

Track practice is in the Big Lots parking lot.

But, lets push on that 800M at all costs and forget about the rest. This kid goes to school to run, not learn.

That is called grade inflation with 3.3 is the bottom 50%.

Good luck, coach. Let us know how it goes.

Is the family of Asian extraction?

I have had parents of 2 different Asian members of my daughter's high school track team tell me during meets that they had been trying to get their respective kid to quit the team because it takes too much time from studying, AP work and SAT prep.

I know other folks who have had similar conversations. Not every family puts a priority on high school athletic achievement.

Sensitive question wrote:

Is the family of Asian extraction?

I have had parents of 2 different Asian members of my daughter's high school track team tell me during meets that they had been trying to get their respective kid to quit the team because it takes too much time from studying, AP work and SAT prep.

I know other folks who have had similar conversations. Not every family puts a priority on high school athletic achievement.

The family is of Chinese descent, and they still have extended family in China. A large percentage of the school population is of Asian descent, with Chinese being the largest sub-group. English is not the mother's first language, and the district will be providing an interpreter for the meeting. So, I guess if anyone out there can offer some guidance on how to connect with a traditional Chinese family, that might be useful too.

1. 3.33 + 2:15 = Happy child that will surely get accepted to run at a college.

2. 3.33 - running = 50/50 chance the kid gets better grades and >50% chance they have a tougher time getting into same college as example 1 above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_physical_exercise

Frustrated HS Coach wrote:

The family is of Chinese descent, and they still have extended family in China. A large percentage of the school population is of Asian descent, with Chinese being the largest sub-group. English is not the mother's first language, and the district will be providing an interpreter for the meeting. So, I guess if anyone out there can offer some guidance on how to connect with a traditional Chinese family, that might be useful too.

Be respectful, even more so than you might think you need to be. The line of thinking you've already been going down (supporting the mother's opinion that her daughter needs to improve her grades) is definitely the best course of action. The language barrier is going to make it much easier for the mother to shut you out of the process, so try to keep things framed as working towards the mother's goals. "Running can be a helpful outlet to achieving good grades", rather than "She can still get good grades while running," etc.

For many of these families, the emphasis on good grades comes from a premium being placed on their children getting into the most highly rated Colleges and Universities out there. Make her aware that excelling in an extracurricular activity like track/xc can go a long way in the admissions process with the Stanford/Ivy league type schools out there.

It's great that you're trying to understand the mother's / family's perspective in order to bridge the gap. Coming from an azn family, I think the biggest gap is that you may think that 3.3 is not a bad grade, whereas to most traditional azn families including my younger self, 3.3 is an embarrassment! (My older self has a less tunnel vision on grades, but this is talking in hindsight). If you can truly understand and accept the view that 3.3 is horrendous, then you're one step closer to relating to the mother, and you would know, feel, and insist that everything else takes lower priority to academics.

While I also saw the importance of extracurricular activities with respect to university acceptance and job prospect, no one else in my family got it, so it was up to me to achieve a delicate balance. This always means keep the grades up at an acceptable grade, which means a 4.0 (or something that rounds up really close to 4.0) and then it was possible to convince them of non-academic activities. Like others have suggested, negotiate a period that the daughter brings up her grade while still running, then re-assess after the period ends.

Akanthos wrote:

Let her see this...

https://youtu.be/AQ_XSHpIbZE

Beautiful...thank you!!!

My parents took me off the track team for a year in middle school because they felt my grades were too low. The season I was off from track ended up being, rather than in improvement, my worst semester ever in terms of grades. Make the mom knows to not be surprised if her daughter's grades get worse rather than better.