How to successfully coach high school cross country at a low socioeconomic status school?

My guess is that there will be comparatively fewer posts on this thread. This is due I will guess to the fast there are actually quite few athletes and coaches from these type of lower or mixed SES schools on Letsrun. It also a harder topic to discuss, uh, calmly, than the amount of drills, strength, 'maxVO2', etc a high end, almost always large and affluent program does. I am hoping Letsrun folks rise to the occasion.

Parents decide where to live largely based on which schools provide the programs and services that their kids need/desire. Coaches decide where to work based on which schools provide the athletes and the support necessary to field a good team. As a result, kids who want to run and coaches who want to coach will just vote with their feet and meet at certain kinds of schools.

Sure, certain types of schools will then be worse at XC than others, but that's not really a bad thing. The kids who want to run XC are still getting the opportunity because they are free to attend schools that have better programs. Truthfully, it's really just inefficient for a good coach to work at a low SES school instead of using their talents at a school with kids who want to run.

I certainly agree with this. There are several factors that contribute to a decent coach ending up at one of these schools. For me, it was Teach for America. I decided to stick with teaching, but in the south, the suburbs don't really want to talk to you when they see your urban school background. VERY few of us are ever invited to make the jump, and usually teach Math or Spanish. If you are becoming a teacher so you can coach, steer clear of TFA etc, unless you want to coach football or basketball.

I will say in response to another poster, that we do structure our workouts with the drills, strides, 9 day cycles, etc. I go to clinics and gets certs and implement it with the kids.They improve, and several have ended up developing a love for running. For me, the biggest problem is getting kids out to the team because "that's a white kid sport." The ones that come out learn otherwise, but its just so few. We can't even score as a team, despite hanging in there with the nicely appointed suburban schools. My track is stacked though with legit sprinters and jumpers though!

Tybout wrote:

Parents decide where to live largely based on which schools provide the programs and services that their kids need/desire.

Most of us that would apply to this thread, have students whose parents don't really get to choose where they live. I'll be the first to admit that its their own fault, but that's kind of what we are looking at.

Distance running is all about consistency, and it's very hard to be consistent if you don't have the same kinds of safety nets that are available to most people. One of my high school XC friends had to work sporadically to support his family, and stay home periodically to look after his mom when she was having problems. He also lived in a neighborhood where it wasn't safe to go out at night.

Impoverished public schools have more important things to worry about than XC teams.

Low SES is mostly inner city black/latino communities or rural white communities.

Black people don't like XC in general unless they're from Kenya. They prefer bball/football.

White rural people are probably not that into it either. Probably are working in high school.

The ones that are into it can make it happen.

I grew up in poor rural schools. I was always on free lunches and never lived anywhere more than 3 years until college. Of the 7 schools I went to, I know 2 had XC teams and 1 of those was very successful - in a small state, small class, no-one was traveling to nationals. I looked up the free-lunch eligible percentage for that school and it is at about 40% and was probably about the same when I went there.

A theme from the other thread: the difference was culture. The team culture was great, but what stands out in comparing it to the other 6 schools and every other sport was that beyond just the team culture, the whole town was supportive of everything the school did - I don't know why, but it was great.

For a coach in a poor setting, rural or urban, there is only so much you can do. You can't buy everyone shoes, you can't drive everyone home, you can't change your town/community culture on your own..... Like other things in life focus on what you can change. Hopefully you are in teaching/coaching because you love kids and you love your sport. Share that love of running and learning as much as you can. On the practical side, if it were me, I would find fellow runners on staff at my feeder elementary and middle schools and try to get them to start running clubs, encourage kids to run and point out kids that I can encourage. For the summer connect with a local AAU/USATF club if you have one and start one if you don't. Most importantly, work on your own team culture.

Good luck. Hang in there. You do make a difference.

"I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice around me to melt." - W.L. Garrison

Tybout wrote:

Sure, certain types of schools will then be worse at XC than others, but that's not really a bad thing. The kids who want to run XC are still getting the opportunity because they are free to attend schools that have better programs.

This is NOT the case for a large percentage of the SES kids in our country.

For example in CA, CIF (governing body) allows transfers for athletic reasons now, but not everyone will be able to equally take advantage of these rules. If I live out in the sticks and need a 30 minute ride on the school bus to get to the only high school in my district, how am I going to get to the big, affluent, suburban school that is further away in a different district?

Parents aren't going to move into a house they can't afford so their kid can run cross country.....sorry, but it isn't going to happen.

Great post dirt poor. One goes into HS coaching (and teaching) to help kids, not to maximize a career. I have always thought actually that it is more worthwhile to teach and coach at non-affluent school. Sure it will drive you crazy, and it is harder to be 'competitive', whatever that means in HS sports, but way more satisfying.

A second thing about low SES kids....you can't always tell who they are. Almost all of our Hispanic kids wear clean neat clothes and come to school clean. It's a little easier to tell which white kids are poor. They tend to look shabbier and wear a certain brand or style of clothing.

I'll give you an example. One of the XC kids in my AP class (Mexican) asked if he could come and work out with me at lunch today (I have lunch an prep period together, so I will often go into the weight room at lunch). The kid met me at the weight room after having picked up his lunch from the cafeteria. He didn't have the stuff you pay for from the a la carte line. Instead he had the nasty USDA supplied chicken patty hockey puck on a stale bun free lunch.

I never would have guessed that this kid is low SES. He isn't a clothes horse, but his clothes are in good condition and he always comes to school clean. He is polite and engaged in class and always gets his homework done. He sometimes would have to leave XC practice early or miss a weekend meet to look after siblings, but that condition is not exclusive to low SES kids. So, of all the normal "tells" a poor kid has, he only really exhibited one. Fortunately for me and my team, he lives around the corner from the school. If he needed to take the bus home out into the country, there would be a good chance that he couldn't stay on my team.

At our school, we are right around 50% low SES student population. On the other hand, we have kids of long time land owners that were here prior to the "Grapes of Wrath" days. These folks tend to be quite wealthy. We have kids of the Grapes of Wrath Okie migrants who have never climbed out of the cycle of poverty and we have a suburban population that works in some of the larger towns in the area. Our student body is a pretty interesting mix.

It’s so impressive when poor kids can tear it up on the XC course. Us rich kids have a lot of advantages. We have gym memberships, spikes, cars to drive to fancy trails, an endless supply of supportive zero drop shoes, the resources to eat a very nutritious diet featuring lots of red meat, complex carbs, and veggies, and the ability to get quality recovery since we don’t have to hold down a job.

What do you all want this thread to be about? Write now I feel the title is a bit vague. If we have a few posts to hash it out I'll change the title and promote it.

It sounds like we want it to be something like "How to best coach cross country at a low socioeconomic status school?"

Is that the right track?

Wejo,

Well, yeah. When NXN, and at least in my state, Oregon, is dominated by more affluent schools pretty much in all sports, but even in XC which requires fewer committed people to be good, I would call that a concern. Perhaps in this thread we are looking for that 'McFarland' magic and how to get it.

It's entirely possible that poor urban schools have a harder time than rural as the communities are more fractured whereas rural schools, as evidenced by some of the above posts, go all in support all facets of their school's activities.

I for one feel athletics is, well, kinda boring if it means only certain types of kids at certain types of schools can be successful. Actually it feels un-American.

LowSES wrote:

Wejo,

Well, yeah. When NXN, and at least in my state, Oregon, is dominated by more affluent schools pretty much in all sports, but even in XC which requires fewer committed people to be good, I would call that a concern. Perhaps in this thread we are looking for that 'McFarland' magic and how to get it.

It's entirely possible that poor urban schools have a harder time than rural as the communities are more fractured whereas rural schools, as evidenced by some of the above posts, go all in support all facets of their school's activities.

I for one feel athletics is, well, kinda boring if it means only certain types of kids at certain types of schools can be successful. Actually it feels un-American.

Agree. We all get sick of seeing the Jesuits, Central Catholics, and Summits of the sport dominate year after year. How can the PPS and the Milwaukee schools get to the top?

Mid to Late '80s in Illinois, East St. Louis Lincoln (public) and Chicago Mendal Catholic (obviously private, but I think low income) were both inner city schools that were predominantly African American. Great teams. Dynamic coaches. It can be done. It's certainly not easy. BTW neither school is still in existence.

But you're assuming that options are limited to the immediate area. A person can live anywhere in the country. That parent who couldn't afford a home in an affluent part of Los Angeles might be able to live in Lancaster County, PA and put their kids in a decent school with a good XC team. And no, I'm not suggesting that people move just for XC. I am suggesting that people move to a place that offers the entire bundle of amenities, services, and attributes that suit their needs. School and running are only one piece of this, but with tens of thousands of communities in the country, you can certainly find one that has all the things you're looking for, including good schools and XC programs (even if the latter is a minor consideration.

Sure, in theory we're all free to move wherever we want and poverty wages in L.A. might get you a lot further in Lancaster PA. However, the scene in McFarland where the kids on the bus had never seen the ocean is not far off the mark. I take my kids to a meet in Golden Gate Park every year and after the meet we go down to the beach for a picnic / frisbee / fun time. Every year, there are a number of kids who have never seen the ocean. Kids in poverty have very small worlds. I have a class full of kids who have never been to Yosemite NP, despite the fact that Half Dome is visible from our school on a clear day. These poor kids have poor parents who likely grew up the same way. Telling them to find a low cost of living county on the other side of the continent where they can go and maybe get an entry level job would be like telling them they have to move to Mars.

Granted, people move all the time and many people will jump from state to state looking for a better life. It just doesn't work the way you are suggesting. Usually, kids move from a bad situation in one state to a bad situation in another state.

As far as the "McFarland Magic". There was a great article by Rick Riley in Sports Illustrated in early 2004. There was a quote in the article that went something to the effect of "give so much of yourself that the kids cannot say no".

I teach on a rural Indian reservation, where every student is on free/reduced lunch, and we struggle with attendance. 5 years ago we almost lost our accreditation, and right now we are celebrating because one of our grades is more than 50% proficient in math, and that's a big deal. Mostly, the kids just want to play basketball; everything else is ancillary. We had a new PE teacher last year that took on the role of head track coach, and he had about 20 kids (almost a third of our 7-12 student population) go out on the first few days. He set down some simple rules like 'if you don't come to practice, you don't compete' and 'here's my list of warm-up drills and workouts for all the different groups today, and I expect you to do them'. Every single student except 2 quit the team within the first 2 weeks. The other teachers were mad at him for being "so harsh" on the kids, but his rules were pretty simple and straightforward; the big different was that the kids were so used being allowed to just jog around a little and then play basketball for track practice that this new method felt like a punishment.

The thing that people who don't work at SES schools don't understand is that many of the students don't come to school motivated, wanting to be there, and feeling like their life will actually make a difference. I went through a quality AP program at a large, mostly white suburb school growing up, and the kids in my class were all motivated and ready to go; the students at this school have no drive or determination. Every day is mostly a struggle to get them to come to school and care about it- sports are just the fun thing after school. So it's always a trade-off. If you hold students to really high standards without taking a few years to build it up, you are screwed.

Ok I've changed the title of the thread and will put on homepage