Reply to Cross country / track experience & advice

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to " Cross country / track experience & advice"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]College recruiting in XC and track is radically changing. Schools that opt in to the new NCAA deal will in April have roster limits. 35 for track and 10 for cross country in the SEC, the top of the heap money wise and athletically. Look at Arkansas, easily the most successful program of all time. They have 52 athletes, really all of them top flight D1 athletes. They will have to cut 17 athletes, a number of whom are studs (there will be 46 second 400m guys cut). Those 17 are national class athletes and will go somewhere. You can’t do the sport well at the club level. If you can’t score in the SEC in more than one event, your are vulnerable. If you are a vaulter, better jump well over 18 feet as one eventers are under pressure. Even if you are a great 800 meter runner (like sub 1:48) you will be under pressure because very few run cross country well. Now in lesser conferences the marks won’t be as high but D11 and D111 are going to benefit. They are going to get athletes they haven’t seen before. Scholarships will be limited - D11 gives them but it is hard to find a good academic fit in D11.

If in recruiting there is a coach who is solid and the school makes sense (and this is more often going to be D111), I would consider carefully.

At the D1 level coaches will recruit ready made Olympian foreign athletes when they can. Let me give you an example. I ran 8:36 for two miles indoors in the 70’s and easily qualified for nationals. At least in the top 8. Today with the influx of foreign athletes it will take the equivalent of 8:20 to qualify, and it might not make it with the two collegiate leaders running the equivalent of an 8:05 two mile, with a number of guys in the 8:10 range. D111 will look mighty fine where you can actually be developed and not race every workout against world class runners 5 years older.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics