1st half of my coaching career xc was a no-cut sport. 2nd half making the team was based on a combination of attendance and performance. I'm not completely sold yet on either philosophy. What's your experience been? Especially those of you who have done both.
Never done cuts before in XC or track. Attendance is more of an issue in my experience in Track but you skip three practices your gone. I also do pushups if your late without a note. Of course you can get kicked off for other reasons but its never been performance based for me ever.
I don’t cut kids. They cut themselves because we have an attendance policy. We also have policies regarding walking, lack of completing drills or exercises, etc. As long as you are willing to consistently work, you are on the team.
Coach Couch wrote:
I don’t cut kids. They cut themselves because we have an attendance policy. We also have policies regarding walking, lack of completing drills or exercises, etc. As long as you are willing to consistently work, you are on the team.
Agreed. 100%
No, it's HS, they can learn something, the coaches job is to find a way to teach them.
I would say the only reason to cut is if your school doesn’t provide enough support for the amount of participants you have. It could be lack of assistant coaches, facilities, etc... This is a none issue for 99% of XC programs where some struggle to field a team. However, for track this is more likely and a cut may be needed.
citius5000 wrote:
Never done cuts before in XC or track. Attendance is more of an issue in my experience in Track but you skip three practices your gone. I also do pushups if your late without a note. Of course you can get kicked off for other reasons but its never been performance based for me ever.
I hate the idea of using exercise as punishment.
Wait, people actually do cuts in cross country? Wtf... Glad I didn't have that. I didn't blossom until late in high school.
My sons Hs team cuts to keep the team at Max of 50 guys. I remember when I was in Hs trying to get 12or 15kids was a challenge
This fall will be the first time I make cuts in xc. Only returning runners can be cut. All newcomers make the team. I have noticed a small change in the culture of our team, so I have decided to hold the returning runners accountable for their summer training. Each kid was given a time trial standard to hit at the beginning of the season. Not a difficult standard, but one that assures me they didn't something over the summer. If they don't hit their time they don't make the team. Hopefully it works.
Coach Couch wrote:
I don’t cut kids. They cut themselves because we have an attendance policy. We also have policies regarding walking, lack of completing drills or exercises, etc. As long as you are willing to consistently work, you are on the team.
This^ is the right answer. I will say if there's a situation where you end up with way too many kids to reasonably be able to look after their safety, at that point you HAVE to make cuts just for logistical and liability reasons. There has to be a certain coach to athlete ratio to make the program work and ensure you are actually coaching , not herding, the kids through the season.
PeanutButterJelly wrote:
Wait, people actually do cuts in cross country? Wtf... Glad I didn't have that. I didn't blossom until late in high school.
I got cut from the JV basketball team when I had just turned 14 and my growth spurt hadn’t really kicked in, although I was actually a decent player. Ended up growing 9 inches by senior year and could have easily started varsity as I kept playing a lot of pickup (it was a pretty bad team), but I ended up focusing on another team sport where I was all-region (not counting track, where I was much better).
Genuinely curious if you think basketball coaches should also keep players on who may be “late bloomers”?
No-cut, in general. If a kid has a bad attitude, I usually give them a season or two to change it, and I will mention this to them so that they know what I/the team needs from them. Teemagehood is harder on some than others, and some folks have to come to school to get examples of apropriate behavior.
That said, if a kid has an attitude so bad that it is damaging the team long-term, I find a reason to cut them. For example, there was an athlete on another local team who felt he was entitled to be consistently openly rude to the meet officials. He was also awful to his teammates, whom he seemed to treat like sub-humans because they were slower than him. If that kid had been on my team and I had administrative backing, he would have been gone.
longtimecoach wrote:
This fall will be the first time I make cuts in xc. Only returning runners can be cut. All newcomers make the team. I have noticed a small change in the culture of our team, so I have decided to hold the returning runners accountable for their summer training. Each kid was given a time trial standard to hit at the beginning of the season. Not a difficult standard, but one that assures me they didn't something over the summer. If they don't hit their time they don't make the team. Hopefully it works.
So I’m legitimately curious what drives this militant level of commitment that high school XC coaches demand out of the runners on the team. Summer running, mandatory attendance policies, etc. I remember really despising this absurd burden of performance that is placed on young people who really could gain a lot more from flexibility.
When I didn’t attend summer practices due to my summer jobs, I was aggressively questioned due to my “lack of commitment”. Looking at how I’ve turned out in life compared to the “dedicated” runners, I have to laugh at how dumb high school running coaches can be. “Oh cool, Try Hard Harry attended every summer practice, but now is approaching 30 with $30k of student loan debt while waiting tables reminiscing about the high school running glory days... what a life!”
It wasn’t until I quit running, went to college and got a job in the private sector that I slowly began to see the comedy in this level of obsession over high school running.
I agree with the consensus that if you skip practice often enough I’m not cutting you, you are cutting yourself. I used to be a “ no cut” coach but have now added one ground for cutting that would seem to be ridiculous but is necessary . If you can’t run a mile without walking in a week, 2 miles after 2 weeks and 3 miles after 3 weeks, you get cut. Not much of a requirement but before I put it in I had kids on the team who claimed they couldn’t run a mile. They made the team a real $hit show.
longtimecoach wrote:
This fall will be the first time I make cuts in xc. Only returning runners can be cut. All newcomers make the team. I have noticed a small change in the culture of our team, so I have decided to hold the returning runners accountable for their summer training. Each kid was given a time trial standard to hit at the beginning of the season. Not a difficult standard, but one that assures me they didn't something over the summer. If they don't hit their time they don't make the team. Hopefully it works.
You need to get over yourself. It's freakin HS XC. Ask yourself this: How can YOU benefit a kid more, by having him attend your practices or by being cut and sitting on a couch with an xbox or working a whopper flopper job?
Kids only have 4 years and then life gets real, I don't see why you can't act like a human being. Remember you are there to help them, not the other way around Mr. EgoBiggerThanHisJob.
Where I grew up a lot of schools were fortunate if they could even get 7 kids to come out and participate all year. Also; JV races..
XC team wrote:
My sons Hs team cuts to keep the team at Max of 50 guys. I remember when I was in Hs trying to get 12or 15kids was a challenge
My old HS has recently fielded teams of 1-3 runners. Not even enough to score. My Jr year back in '94 we almost made State. My senior year we only had 3 runners. Since the old coach left about 5-6yrs ago they have fielded teams of 1-3 and their girls TRACK team had 3 athletes total....again 20 years ago these teams were winning conference. School of around 400.
Alan
We typically have about 35-45 boys and 20-30 girls try out for our team during summer. When we didn't make cuts we would lose about 5 boys and 5 girls by the time summer was over. They were the ones who wouldn't show up to practice with much consistency and therefore didn't improve, which tended to make them feel left out I suspect.
Interestingly, once we started making cuts the retention rate from summer to the season grew. This was unexpected, but makes sense. When you have standards for the kids to meet it gives them a goal and seems to increase their motivation because they want to be part of the team. In 2017 we cut 2 boys and 2 girls, then in 2018 we cut 1 boy and 0 girls. Our team has gotten sightly larger, but the real difference is that the slowest half-dozen kids for each gender have gotten about 2 minutes faster than the slowest half-dozen kids from previous years when we had no cuts.
YungFartlek wrote:
Coach Couch wrote:
I don’t cut kids. They cut themselves because we have an attendance policy. We also have policies regarding walking, lack of completing drills or exercises, etc. As long as you are willing to consistently work, you are on the team.
Agreed. 100%
This is similar to mine as well. Only other thing I would add would be grades. Some cut themselves due to grades.