High school runner running unattached?

You’d likely be able to get into some collegiate meets but check out your state’s sports association rules for HS meets. Most state associations that I’m familiar with prohibit or limit member teams from competing with non-member athletes. They might define eligible athletes as being students eligible for HS ZYZ’s team which might prohibit you, an unattached athlete from XYZ high school from also competing in that meet.

Depends on the state

Coachy Coach wrote:

Depends on the state

Well that sucks because I just checked with my Virginia high school league and they said I wouldn’t be able to run any vhsl or nfhs meets. What should I do if I don’t want to run with my school but want to still do meets?

Bump. Considering this also

Ask Brodey Hasty.

Going Solo wrote:

So I’ve been running with my school team for xc, and I really don’t like the head coaches, and I want to work with a personal coach who helped me out a bit in outdoor track.

You should still run with your high school team. There's more to life than running but running with your high school friends (they are your friends, right?) is something that you can never forget. Just had our 40th high school reunion last year and it was fun hanging out with the guys from the XC team again. There is that bond that just can't be broken.

On a side note, you could still workout with your personal coach when track and XC aren't in session.

Team Bond wrote:

Going Solo wrote:

So I’ve been running with my school team for xc, and I really don’t like the head coaches, and I want to work with a personal coach who helped me out a bit in outdoor track.

You should still run with your high school team. There's more to life than running but running with your high school friends (they are your friends, right?) is something that you can never forget. Just had our 40th high school reunion last year and it was fun hanging out with the guys from the XC team again. There is that bond that just can't be broken.

On a side note, you could still workout with your personal coach when track and XC aren't in session.

I mean, for xc, yes I have a good amount of friends, but when indoor track rolls around, all of my friends go off to do other commitments, leaving me with like one friend.

It will be way too much work to find a few meets that you will have travel to. Running for HS is easy.

1) Don't start posts with the word "so".

2) You have the rest of your life to go solo. You only have a few years to be on a team. Stay with your team, then go be a solo hobby runner/jogger after graduation.

3) If you quit your team to go run on your own, they'll remember you as a selfish jerk. Is that what you want for your legacy?

4) The ability to get along with authority figures, even ones you dislike or disagree with, is a life skill that will serve you well long past high school. Learn that skill now.

A guy the fake one wrote:

2) You have the rest of your life to go solo. You only have a few years to be on a team. Stay with your team, then go be a solo hobby runner/jogger after graduation.

3) If you quit your team to go run on your own, they'll remember you as a selfish jerk. Is that what you want for your legacy?

I don’t want to be a hobby jogger right after high school, I want to run d1 collegiately first, and I’m not sure if I can do that running with the team. If my friends(who all just take it as a social club) think I’m selfish, oh well. They have things that they take seriously, and I do, too. Mine happens to be running, so I want it to be more than just goofing around after school.

Crazy idea but what about talking to the track coach about using some of the workout from the private coach? Seems like a more sensible solution than just quitting and going solo.

Some HS coaches struggle to take care of an entire track squad, he might be OK with someone else doing the distance stuff while he deals with everything else.

EZ10Miler wrote:

Crazy idea but what about talking to the track coach about using some of the workout from the private coach? Seems like a more sensible solution than just quitting and going solo.

Some HS coaches struggle to take care of an entire track squad, he might be OK with someone else doing the distance stuff while he deals with everything else.

My first thing was to talk with my HS coach(he’s solely distance), and I asked him if I could meet with my personal coach once a week, and then the rest of the week run with the team. I thought this would be a good compromise, but my HS coach thinks he knows best and wants to instill “team unity” and not let the other runners get jealous, so that’s a nope. I have to do the workouts everyone else is doing. As for suggesting workouts, my high school coach and personal coach have different ideas on how hard of workouts I should be doing, and when I should be doing them, so my school coach wouldn’t agree to it.

Ultimately you are responsible for you and while it is not ideal, you will have to make adjustments within the given perimeters.

Coaches tend to err on one side or the other. Some are all about volume, some are all about intensity. You'll just have to personally adjust your workouts to fit what works best for you.

Running solo only works for the top runners in the nation. I doubt you are that.

A guy the fake one wrote:

4) The ability to get along with authority figures, even ones you dislike or disagree with, is a life skill that will serve you well long past high school. Learn that skill now.

This is the correct answer.

Your entire life is going to be filled with bosses you don't like or people who have power and authority over you that you disagree with. Your HS coach is just the beginning. Almost without exception, every guy on every team in every sport that I was ever on who wanted to go off on his own was a guy who had a way too high opinion of himself and problems with ANY authority. All of his coaches knew less than he did, the reason he was running slow, not hitting etc was the coach's fault.

You say you want to run in college, college coaches are going to think that HS athletes that think their HS coach knew nothing will also think they know nothing. They will assume that a kid who was dissatisfied in HS will be dissatisfied in college. All that adds up to a kid who is going to be a problem.

I read the OP's post and immediately think "I don't want him on my team, he is just going to be more trouble then he could be worth."

Unless you are a young Tiger Woods or Venus/Serena Williams going on your own will end poorly. That means if you are not RIGHT NOW WAY FASTER THAN EVERY PERSON ON YOUR TEAM you are not a young Tiger Woods/Serena/Venus Williams. Which means you are probably more trouble than you are worth.

EZ10Miler wrote:

Ultimately you are responsible for you and while it is not ideal, you will have to make adjustments within the given perimeters.

Coaches tend to err on one side or the other. Some are all about volume, some are all about intensity. You'll just have to personally adjust your workouts to fit what works best for you.

Running solo only works for the top runners in the nation. I doubt you are that.

Haha you’re right about me not being a top runner, and my coach seems to err on the side of “don’t let my runners get injured or burn out early in season” because many runners on my team get injured. We don’t start really hard workouts (6x1000, 4xmile,7x800, etc) until October. Until then, we do medium mileage(55 miles a week, mostly doubles because he talks so much at practice we only get a few miles in.) and do some easy workouts such as 6x400 hills, 300 on 300 off fartlek, etc.

I was almost a minute faster than the second fastest kid when I was a freshman. This year we had a kid move into our county who’s a little faster than me, but him and I are both doing worse than we did last year, along with our 3,4,5 runners.

Going solo wrote:

I was almost a minute faster than the second fastest kid when I was a freshman. This year we had a kid move into our county who’s a little faster than me, but him and I are both doing worse than we did last year, along with our 3,4,5 runners.

I was also a good 30 seconds faster than the second fastest 1600m runner on the team during track.

1) If your goal is to run on a college team, quitting your high school team will NOT help you get there. What do you think a college coach will think of a guy who quit his team because he didn't like the coach? I'd think it means you'll quit on me at some point.

2) People who don't care about their reputation with others are sociopaths.

3) The fact that you ignored my previous 4th point is telling.

4) Given the above, I find it difficult to believe that the problem is really all on your coaches.

It’s not that I disagree, but there’s a difference between not agreeing with them, and then being wrong. I should’ve rephrased my OP. You can have a boss you don’t like, but he gets the job done. He gets results, progress, etc. if not, he’d be fired because a business/job needs to get a certain amount of money to hit their goal or they will go out of business. Schools not going to fire a coaches who volunteer their time to coach, even if they do a bad job, because hey, who else will do it/what does it matter? If I ever have a boss that isn’t helping me be successful and statistics are getting worse for the business, I don’t think I’d work for him/her much longer. As for the sociopath thing, it’s more that they feel that they should understand, like they even joke about it themselves that we never get anything done at practice and they don’t care.