Are the top high school XC programs in Colorado recruiting?

Probably because he moved (changed residence areas)?

Or he could have been "bullied"? Almost every athlete I know that transferred from small school to big school got away with that excuse.

Ah. (smh)

ACTUALLY, Way more than taht. at least 10 that I know.

You guys all talk about recruiting at Niwot how about the Chap girls team? The top girls were all in the Valor running club. all planning on going to Valor. The old Valor coach who we know recruited heavily at Valor was run out. now he coached at chap and all the girls followed him. Only hurts the girls who were already at Chap. Does CHSAA do their job anymore?

Wow! At least 10! And guess what! Only 7 of them race varsity! And FWIW, guess what else! Only 5 of them score!

Couldn’t agree more! CHSAA does need to do their job regarding recruiting as well as other areas. Not only was the ex Valor coach recruiting, but he resigned because he was caught abusing several athletes on his team all going back many years. All was documented and reported with Valor, but the guy gets another chance somewhere else simply because no one investigated the reasons behind his resignation. CHSAA was contacted about the situation as well and they said their job/role regarding coaches is to monitor recruiting, not to look into coach misconduct which seems odd. Shouldn’t they care more about abuse than recruiting? Surely if Chap and the Douglas County School District were aware of these incidents, he wouldn’t have been hired on so quickly. Once an abuser, always an abuser. He won’t change who he is, he will find a better way to hide it this time around.

Honestly CHSAA should just do away with the recruiting rules, they are unenforceable and in most cases unprovable. If an athlete decides on their own volition to follow a coach to another school, that's fine. If the coach suggested to the athlete privately that they should transfer then that's recruiting. How can anyone prove one over the other? Only a stupid coach would leave any kind of paper trail, like emails or letters. It's not like CHSAA has the authority to subpoena people's phones, they are not a law enforcement agency. It's hopeless in a state with open enrollment.

CHSAA should worry about the one thing they have control over, and that's balancing the classifications to make the competition as fair as possible. Eventually all the top programs will end up in 5A, and they can beat up on each other there. The biggest question is why is Niwot still in 4A for XC and Track? They should have been moved up years ago. How can you have a team regularly ranked one of the top XC teams in the country still competing in Colorado's second largest classification? Private schools and potentially charter schools should probably play up a classification by default. If CHSAA just focused on this one thing it's probably the closest Colorado is ever going to get to a level playing field in high school sports.

Abuse? How so? I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but what is considered abuse in this situation? So sad

I think private/ charter schools should just play in their own classification but I do like the play up as a default. I think Kansas is trying with coupled with a review of recent past success?

I would also get rid of the time qualifiers for state track and go back to qualifying at regional meets.

Allegations were brought against Coplen, the school wouldn’t give him the job support he needed, so he dipped and is still coaching. He is a good coach ❤️ & a good person.

Unfortunately making accusations against high school coaches is a popular way for athletes and parents to get rid of coaches they have a beef with. The Denver Post had an article about just this topic a couple of months ago:

denverpost.com

Coaches under pressure: How parent influence on high school athletics is producing tension, upheaval in Colorado

Kyle Newman

Before Chad Hanson coached a game for Heritage High School girls basketball last season, he had problems with two parents.

Link:www.denverpost.com/2023/09/17/parent-p...

It's not CHSAA's role to vet coaches for schools, that's the school and the school district's job. It's entirely possible that the good people at Chaparral and Douglas Country didn't do their homework. If someone has real information on this they should contact the AD at Chaparral and possibly the head track coaches there as well, the contact information is right on their website. This is probably not the place to continue slandering someone, either put up or shut up, give the folks at Chap a call and spill the beans if you've got them.

Looking beyond just XC and Track, I think the private/charter schools in the lower classifications (3A and below) likely represent some of the biggest inequalities in the state. You have small communities, many of which are geographically isolated as well as economically challenged competing against private and charter schools along the front range. If you think everyone on here is upset about Niwot and Valor "recruiting" imagine what those communities on the Eastern Plains and the Western Slope think about the likes of Lutheran, Holy Family or even The Classical Academy? Anyway I've posted on this thread before, CHSAA has changed its bylaws to allow them to move schools up or down in classification based on economic factors and historical performance as well as student population, so it seems like they are on the right track, but of course their priority seems to be reshuffling the football classifications rather than most of the other sports.

With him, this team is overly stacked now

Absolutely, Niwot gets the Boulder bros, valor adds Creekers and Regis talent

There are great teams in every classification in Colorado. It’s just the nature of the state. Alamosa is neck and neck for the top team in 3A, and quite honestly, they are incapable of recruiting. A lot of teams on the western slope and in southern Colorado (Durango) phave great teams. If a community buys in and has a knowledgeable coach, they can still excel.

I think this brings up another question in this debate, and I wonder if anyone knows any college coaches that can give their opinion.

I can see three main reasons a kid transfers:

1. They feel that they aren't being coached well so they transfer to receive better in that department and maximize their potential. It will be interesting to see just how much Mazurana improves over this season and next. He was really good last year at Windsor last year, but was that all natural talent? He's really good again this year at Niwot and, per their philosophy, is racing fewer races and on generally faster courses.

2. They transfer so they can have a better chance to be on a State qualifier, win State as a team, and/or make some noise at Nationals as a team. Mission accomplished for Mazurana. The only question was probably would he be in Niwot's varsity or JV. Mission accomplished, again.

3. They transfer to get the name of the school and potentially get some more college recruiting interest they maybe wouldn't have gotten. Niwot certainly garners more college attention. A college recruiter knows that a kid that goes to Niwot has been surrounded by excellence and ran in a college-style program, so maybe that influences them.

And there's my question. One of the things I love about running is the meritocracy of it. Run fast times and you're better at running than kids that ran slower than you, in general (we can debate course lengths and weather, of course). So if you're a college coach, do you pay extra attention to Niwot runners, even if they never ran varsity? If a kid goes to a no-name smaller school (Windsor), do they lose out on college attention, even if they run phenomenal times?