Senior in high school looking to walk onto my college track team next year. What are some times to shoot for in the 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 5K?
Senior in high school looking to walk onto my college track team next year. What are some times to shoot for in the 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 5K?
d3runna wrote:
Senior in high school looking to walk onto my college track team next year. What are some times to shoot for in the 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 5K?
- have a pulse
- be able to finish the race
(Ask specific coaches not LetsRun)
Email the coaches and ask. The best d3 schools will probably have some minimum standards to join the team, but there are probably a lot that will let anyone run.
Apophis99 wrote:
d3runna wrote:
Senior in high school looking to walk onto my college track team next year. What are some times to shoot for in the 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 5K?
- have a pulse
- be able to finish the race
(Ask specific coaches not LetsRun)
I was also going to say pulse thing. Per another thread, you also need skills to run.
basically everyone at d3 is a walk on
60
2:08
4:40
10:20
17:00
And you'll be at, or near the top of most D3 freshmen incoming.
if they don't let you walk on with whatever times you already have, they aren't a coach worth running for anyway
Ummm, Wrong. Other way around.
Sincerely,
D3 Coach of a 80 person roster, successful program
I bet you wrote:
60
2:08
4:40
10:20
17:00
And you'll be at, or near the top of most D3 freshmen incoming.
LOL, no
My HS team alone had 8 guys at or under 4:40 and probably 12 to 15 dudes under 60 sec.
Coming into college we had 4 to 6 freshman dudes sub 2 minutes, 4:20ish milers, etc.
This shouldn't preclude anyone from wanting to walk on d3.
Why waste your time. D3 is basically for the JV runners from HS. Any serious runner would only go D2 or D1.
The real oighegeig wrote:
Ummm, Wrong. Other way around.
Sincerely,
D3 Coach of a 80 person roster, successful program
So you're saying a coach who doesn't let anyone walk onto a DIII team is a coach who is worth running for?
I went to a DIII school with about 50-60 guys on the roster most years (not including women's team) that had [borat voice] great success [/borat voice] on the conference and occasionally national level, both xc and track.
Only thing that precluded you from being on the team is your commitment to the team. If you show up to practice every day with a good attitude and honest effort, you were on the team. Never saw anyone denied for being slow/weak/etc. If you show up every day, you will run/jump/throw in competitions. Now, we were admittedly a distance heavy team in a metropolitan area (plenty of meets easy to get to). But if you only ran 2 years in high school and were slow as heck but loved the sport, or had never even thrown or vaulted or jumped before but wanted to give it a try, you were on the team.
If you have a successful team but have a hard time managing it because of its size or something, maybe you should figure out a way to round up enough volunteer/asst coaches to make it work. DIII is not about running a tight ship of a team that mows down the competition with efficiency. It is about giving your best as a coach for all student-athletes who are willing to give their best to you. That is your responsibility as a coach. If you find that hard, maybe you aren't cut out to be a coach at the DIII level.
If my coach was going to deny someone a spot on a DIVISION THREE team I was on because they were slow or weak or new to the sport, I would be skeptical of that coach's understanding of/commitment to myself and teammates as whole student-athlete-human beings. Keep your elitism to places that offer athletic scholarships.
oighegeig wrote:
The real oighegeig wrote:
Ummm, Wrong. Other way around.
Sincerely,
D3 Coach of a 80 person roster, successful program
So you're saying a coach who doesn't let anyone walk onto a DIII team is a coach who is worth running for?
I went to a DIII school with about 50-60 guys on the roster most years (not including women's team) that had [borat voice] great success [/borat voice] on the conference and occasionally national level, both xc and track.
Only thing that precluded you from being on the team is your commitment to the team. If you show up to practice every day with a good attitude and honest effort, you were on the team. Never saw anyone denied for being slow/weak/etc. If you show up every day, you will run/jump/throw in competitions. Now, we were admittedly a distance heavy team in a metropolitan area (plenty of meets easy to get to). But if you only ran 2 years in high school and were slow as heck but loved the sport, or had never even thrown or vaulted or jumped before but wanted to give it a try, you were on the team.
If you have a successful team but have a hard time managing it because of its size or something, maybe you should figure out a way to round up enough volunteer/asst coaches to make it work. DIII is not about running a tight ship of a team that mows down the competition with efficiency. It is about giving your best as a coach for all student-athletes who are willing to give their best to you. That is your responsibility as a coach. If you find that hard, maybe you aren't cut out to be a coach at the DIII level.
If my coach was going to deny someone a spot on a DIVISION THREE team I was on because they were slow or weak or new to the sport, I would be skeptical of that coach's understanding of/commitment to myself and teammates as whole student-athlete-human beings. Keep your elitism to places that offer athletic scholarships.
You clearly have zero understanding of what it takes to run a college program, let alone a successful one (not just wins and losses). It doesn’t make a coach a bad person or a bad coach if they don’t accept every person that wants to be on the team. Some teams have roster limitations from their admin or conference. Many can’t afford to pay assistants and volunteers are not always that easy to come by if you aren’t a high caliber team. If a coach has more athletes than their staff can handle no one enjoys it, which in my experience is the core of D3 - enhancing the student experience. So tell me how not taking on more kids makes you a worse coach?
Don’t be a homer. Your ability, as a college coach, to take on non recruited kids is often, if not always, dictated by factors you can’t control. I have to turn away walk-ons all the time because I can’t travel everyone, can’t affors uniforms for more than a certain number, only have the budget to feed x number of kids and have a limited number of coaches on staff and I feel like I’m in a pretty darn good position in D3 (success, funding, location etc)... can’t imagine what it would be like at mid tier, or lower, D3 school.
Maybe you should tell that to the D3 team in my town, which competes with other D3 teams in an area known for very fast runners.
The times are no better than the moderate high school times I see at the high school meets I attend. The times I suggested are completely valid, because if improved a bit, they reach your times, which are fast enough to win D3 meets.
4:15
9:10
15:30
JoeRoganSuperFan wrote:
4:15
9:10
15:30
Hah! Those times would WIN nearly every D3 meet I've been to over the past ten years.
You go to bad meets.
Not sure about the standards for joining, but if you want to be good, your 8k race pace should not be slower than 5:15, and 10k race pace no slower than 5:20ish.
d3runna wrote:
Senior in high school looking to walk onto my college track team next year. What are some times to shoot for in the 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 5K?
A lot of divergent responses here...
It certainly depends on the program, but the standards I would think of (for a guy) are 18 minutes in the 5k or 5:20 in the 1600. A few teams won't have room for you with those times, but most will, as the best teams often are larger. But you'll certainly be at the back of any decent program, so you've got to embrace that.
There are some programs certainly where you can be much slower and get on, but I think 18 minutes is about the level where a D3 coach with a decent program will see an eager Freshman who's in shape after training all summer and say "sure, let's give it a shot" rather than "I'm sorry, but you're just too far off the back."
You didn't ask, but these are the approximate standards to be useful to a scoring relay team and/or to make finals in my D3 conference.
400: 53
800: 2:00
1500: 4:08
Mile: 4:25
5000(track): 15:30
It depends a lot on the conference though. Some are very deep . Others have the talent to match it but not the depth. Some are just crap across the board.
If you're predominantly a cross country guy, sub 29:30 your first year or quit. Just not worth the effort if your pie-in-the-sky 8k time is 28 flat.
Funny you'd say that, because I was slower than all those times as a HS senior, then four months later ran a 26:02 on our 8K XC course on try-out day. I guess the D1 team I was on was just too weak.