Reply to Virginia Showcase Meet - track. What is it?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You shouldn’t be looking down at Arkansas. One of the best track and field programs last year for women.[/quote]

Believe me I respect Arkansas. They beat me by 10 yards in the Championship of America relay at the Penn Relays because they were better athletes. That 10 yards might as well have been 100. Making that team in 2025 however - even as a 4:06 high school miler - is really difficult. And the women have the same challenge. I get your point though, most DCUM types dont have any idea how good and disciplined one has to be to make it at Arkansas. They just dismiss the school as lost in flyover country. One of their best runners after retiring took a job as a police officer. A sub 3:50 miler. An immigrant’s kid. Anyone who competed for Johnny Mac learned how to lead and win. He is now one of the leading officers in the state and the most respected too. You could count hundreds of success stories from Arkansas. I used to hear from athletes at snobby schools like mine running down Arkansas. This was ludicrous. Arkansas was better than anyone because they worked harder than everyone and had a terrific championship mindset. I once asked them if it was true they lived like clocks and never ate past six pm. They laughed and said you don’t? No drinking either. This applied to the 27 foot long jumper (a friend from Chicago) and the NCAA Champ XC team they had. Only elitists could look down at these kids.

I have long been a supporter of D111 athletics and have coaching friends in those ranks. Yet most often the P4 has won in recruiting because of you can just compete you can run top 25 times as a frosh. But the times have changed. It makes more sense to look at D111 today, where top flight high school athletes can expect to still be developed. This applies to sprints and field events too.  If you can afford a place like Carleton or Williams, look at them seriously. A four minute mile doesn’t care about the color of your uniform.

D11 gives scholarships and should be attractive. But their 300 plus schools are often in less populated places. So the kids from the metropolitan areas just don’t seek out the Adams States of the sporting universe. D11 is just often a difficult fit. I suspect these schools will become popular but they are difficult to describe in terms of academics (Colorado School of Mines is an exception). [/quote]

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