This actually seems to be more complicated than I originally thought. In every other sport that my other kids or their friends play, there are practices, off season coaching and clubs, off season training, etc. For example, a high school basketball player may play for the school for the season, but plays club with a different coach in the off season. Soccer is the same. In soccer the club is almost always much better than the school because of the coaching and organization. In track the kid has to convince his coach to go extra miles. For a Hs kid, not being confident in your own training, or having your coach who is nice, but produces 1800 5k runners, is hard. So, a simple option might have been a coach and training partners over the summer with the summer racing season or training season being promary(like the club soccer players). This seems simple, but in the running world it’s obviously not. Camps are short. Coaches like ukathleticscoach get upset as though the kid is cheating on you. Year after year training to build through Hs is affected by different incentives (conference championships, scoring at dual meets) etc. It is possible to have a kid whose on a different page than a coach with different goals. I think these can be balanced but coaches need to allow some diversity of training especially when the kid is excited to go for it.