How will the lack of a Spring track season effect college recruiting

Perhaps you can film some time trials, maybe even with pacers?

If she’s any good she probably just need to advocate for herself a bit more that she would have... like someone else mentioned she can run a tt and you as a coach can vouch for her. Coaches will look at last year and next fall cross and if she isn’t a cross kid maybe even have her run a couple tt in her event during fall. She should just fill out recruit questionnaires on college websites she is interested in. May problem will be getting noticed once she is on a schools watch list as long as her training is going well it will be all good.

Get a real time in a road race when they start being held again if track isn't available. Some college coaches will be interested in a time trial result, but many will not. She may have to just rely on running well on xc. Its a shame people are so hysterical about something that isn't that dangerous, save to old unhealthy people.

XC doesn't really help a junior who ran 50 in the 400 or 1:58 in the 800 or even 4:30 in the 1600 as a sophomore. Some of thos guys would have run 48 or 1:53 or 4:15 this year but some would not have improved.

I'll wager the NAIA scoops up a bigger share of people who would have had a breakthrough, but didn't. They would have been noticed by higher profile schools, but now will go unnoticed. Since the NAIA will take just about anyone, be on the lookout for a surge in quality of the NAIA in a year or two.

1600m and lower guys will most affected by this. For longer distance guys (2 mile - 5k) - you should still be able to time trial with someone riding a bike in front or a few other guys. I feel - it's hard to get into 1:53 and 50 second races solo...I suppose you could have a bike pace you but seems harder.

As a former college coach that's worked at every level except for DI (and ran DI myself), I can say that most coaches will take these kind of things into consideration. If she was having a good indoor season and improving from last winter and had decent times from last year, they will consider this and also take into consideration what you have to say about her training. Once things calm down a bit, you could have some intersquad time trials and film them or have her run a solo time trial maybe with a male pacer and use the film to share with coaches. Even if she's not an xc star, improvement in xc will help her get recruited too since those improvements will likely transfer into track as well. It might also be possible to run summer track this year instead of spring track if that doesn't get canceled. I've landed some pretty good recruits for the level I was coaching at based on taking kids based more on potential than current times. At the DIII level, I took a recruit no one else wanted who had run 2:08 in high school and got him down to 1:57 by the end of freshmen year which was top 3 in our conference. Smart coaches will look at other factors and hopefully if you kids have talent, they will still get to the schools they want. Obviously some kids will get overlooked due to missing this season, but there are ways to make up for it the best you can.

Thanks for all the responses.

We had actually played around with the idea of filming some time trials already. She’s more of a 3200m/5k runner so thankfully she will (hopefully) have the XC season to prove herself, but I think the way things are going we’ll probably time trial a few distances towards the end of spring so she at least has that in her back pocket. I will be able to pace her pretty easily so she’ll be able to throw down some good times, and if coaches are interested in that, great! If not, oh well, I can understand that too.

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ThatAverageRunner wrote:
I have an athlete that I coach who is a junior and who was set up to run pretty fast for outdoor track. She ran some indoor meets for the first time this year and ran quite well, but our focus in training was outdoor, but it’s looking like that likely won’t happen. It hasn’t been officially cancelled here yet but I’m not confident.

Anyone else in this same boat? Any advice?

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