College coaches look at place in a XC race. Courses don't have a standard. Coaches look more at track times

Anonymous wrote:College coaches don’t give much credence to XC times for this reason. But they tend to have some familiarity with the better-known courses in the areas in which they recruit. My NJ kid who is running at a D3 in New England found that his coach knew the course used for the NJ state championships.

Correct. For this reason, they're also interested in placement, improvement, etc. And they use track times to get a fuller picture of the kid's potential.

Coaches are familiar with the better know courses. They also look at best times as the potential times for a runner. So, if your kid got a fantastic time on a course, they know that they are capable of running a sub five minute mile or whatever. They understand that times for XC vary from course to course.

College coaches don’t give much credence to XC times for this reason. But they tend to have some familiarity with the better-known courses in the areas in which they recruit. My NJ kid who is running at a D3 in New England found that his coach knew the course used for the NJ state championships.

DD has talked about fast and slow courses, but I don’t think it sunk in for me until the last few meets when she came in well ahead of girls with much faster PRs.

Is there a way to “translate” times across courses? How do the college coaches look at times when every course is so different?