We have a junior girl who is pretty good and is interested in going on and running at the collegiate level. We have started to gather info to help guide her in her decision, but at times are overwhelmed or don’t know what to do/suggest. There are some things we have done; talked about the clearinghouse, visitations to colleges, grades, tests scores, her academic focus. So I guess I am asking what are some important topics/ideas that need to be looked at in this involved process that you would do with an athlete in this position?

A little background info on her: she started with Junior Olympics 6th or 7th grade, but hasn’t done any really consistent off season training yet; say maybe 20 mpw in offseason and 25-35 mpw in season. I have tried to ease her into more training little by little and over the next year will have more structured training in winter/summer along with XC training that will focus on post-season meets. She has been number one on our team since her first day as a freshman. She is a solid racer who when it counts has raced well. She qualified for BorderClash for the 3rd time this past XC season and her PRs are: 800-2:21 1600-5:07, 3200-10:50, 5000-18:24.

I guess another question that has come up (from her and her parents) is with her background where can she go and develop further and be challenged? Is she a D-1 runner? Is she a Pac-12 runner? Is she a Villanova/G-Town/Oregon runner? We have little knowledge about this as well as how much aid she could receive, not to say that money is the number one thing, but it is a big piece of the puzzle.

Thanks for any thoughts and feedback.

Thanks for the question.

My first recommendation would be to read this post that Alan Versaw and I did a little over a year ago. I think he does a great job highlighting that a variety of female runners can be recruited and that if a young woman wants to run in college she will likely have many options.

However, if the young woman in question wants to run at Georgetown, then 2011 NCAA Division I National Champs, then she will need to run a bit faster than her current 5:07. And that’s the hard part – she likely will run faster, but question is how much faster will she run AND will she run enough faster in time to walk-on to programs that she’s interested in.

I’ve been out of the recruiting business for a few years, so I may be off with the times, but my guess is that if she goes from 5:07 to 4:55 that’s a nice jump – realistic, but by no means easy. But that jump will put her in a position where she will be asked to walk-on by the best programs in the country. I will go out on a limb and say every NCAA Division I program would let a 4:55 woman walk-on (note: at some schools, say Duke or Stanford, she’d have to get into school on her own – they typically wouldn’t “save a spot” for a 4:55 girl). The flip side is, she probably won’t get money from the schools that finished top ten at this years NCAA DI XC meet, or she might run the 4:55 so late in the season that there isn’t money left at one of those schools, even if they would have liked to give her some money.

Now, at this point we should realize that the family will need to work case by case, communicating well with each program she’s interested in. Also, her test scores and grades may impact her options: 4:55 with 25 on the ACT vs. 4:55 with 35 on the ACT are two different types of recruits. Bottom line is many DI schools would offer a 4:55 miler a full ride (fully funded women’s programs have 18.0 scholarships for woman’s track and field, under which cross country falls under), yet many of those schools won’t qualify for the NCAA Championships. So she might have to choose between a school that is offering a full ride but doesn’t have a history of developing talent and doesn’t have a culture of training hard vs. walking-on at a school that has a shot of making of the NCAA meet every year she’s in school.

If you have time, listen to the interview with Corey Ihmels where he talks about his number two and number three runners from this year’s team. I don’t think either had run 10:50 as juniors yet both were All-Americans at this year’s DI XC meet. BUT…Corey’s a great coach and knows how to develop talent. Not every girl who runs 10:50 is going to develop in college for the simple reason that the program they choose dosen’t historically develop talent.

And this is where research on the part of parents and athletes come in. Every school lists the HS PRs of the athletes and every school lists the athlete’s current PRs on their website; simply do the research and see what programs are developing athletes. Is my suggestion time consuming? Yes. Is it worth it considering this research will impact the next four-five years of the students life? I think so. Said another way, some programs develop talent and some don’t, yet too many parents and students think all Division I programs are the same and only pay attention to the money being offered.

There are so many other aspects we could talk about. The fact that she could run DII or DIII or NAIA and have a great experience, or the fact that she may be the type of student who decided upon on a major in junior high and is hell bent on becoming a doctor/vet/chemist/etc. and so the search is to find the best doctor/vet/chemist/etc. school that also gives her a chance to develop as an athlete. But as you can see, by just focusing on 5:07 as the primary variable this process is complicated enough.

So there are some thoughts on the subject – I look forward to seeing what others have to say.

As we move from women’s scholarships to men’s, it bears repeating that these are two completely different worlds. A large number of young women can transition directly from high school cross country/track and field into the college arena with an athletic scholarship in hand. Very few young men get that opportunity.

Collegiate track and field programs invite a lot of walk-ons. At many programs, being an invited walk-on is really rather prestigious. If you were good enough in high school to be an invited walk-on at a Wisconsin, a Colorado, or an Oregon, you were a very good high school athlete. And, those invited walk-ons who produce often are elevated in subsequent years to the status of scholarship athlete.

College track and field programs are very much about recruiting top-tier male athletes; there simply isn’t much money in the pot to do it with. Adding to the scarcity of scholarships is the fact that many of the available track and field scholarships are awarded to international athletes (more so than with women, though the phenomenon is certainly not rare with women).

Top-tier programs recruit top-tier athletes. While it’s fair to say that many top-tier state schools look within their own borders for recruits, their eyes are constantly roaming beyond the borders of their own states as well. It’s not the same for all state schools, but a look at the current rosters of some state schools will show you how different it can be.

Take, for example, a look at the men’s rosters of Adams State College and Western State College, two Division II powerhouses within the state of Colorado. You will find that Western State brings in a higher percentage of in-state athletes than Adams State does. While the rosters may not necessarily reflect the actual allocation of scholarships, this example should serve to illustrate the point that it’s not a given that any two given state schools will recruit with equal urgency from inside their own borders.

Schools that aren’t as elite as Adams State and Western State generally tend to recruit more extensively within their own states. Frequently, local athletes will enter these programs with smaller track and field scholarship awards. The combined forces of high out-of-state tuition and the lack of a program that, in and of itself, will draw athletes from afar tend to force these schools to concentrate their scholarship awards on more local athletes.

So, who gets the 12.6 scholarships per team that the NCAA allows men’s programs?

About the simplest possible answer to that question is that those scholarships go to young men who are deemed capable of scoring at the school’s conference meet. Sometimes those individuals are incoming freshmen. Sometimes they are juniors and seniors who’ve demonstrated a year or two of success within the program.

I’ll let Jay comment further on this topic, but it’s my observation that a higher percentage of men’s scholarships than women’s are awarded to athletes already in the program who entered the program as walk-ons. They are awarded to those who have made substantial contributions as freshmen and sophomores.

So, if you’re a high school senior male looking for some sort of barometer of how scholarship-worthy you are, go to the cross country/track and field web sites for the schools you are interested in attending. Find the conference meet results and ask yourself, “What is the likelihood that a college coach would look at me and say that I could score points in the conference meet one or two or, maybe, three years down the road?”

To be sure, very few current high school athletes have posted the kind of marks in high school that would place in a college conference meet, especially a Division I conference meet. There is a lot of athletic maturity that takes place between age 17 and age 20. College coaches, however, are fully aware of that maturity factor and are generally pretty sharp at identifying those who can make the cut.

It is entirely possible that the top performer in the state in a particular year and event won’t get a Division I scholarship offer. That would rarely, if ever, be true of athletes from Texas and California, but it could easily be true of athletes from any of several smaller states.

Athletes like Mason Finley (a Divison I All-American in the shot put and discus at Kansas as a true freshman in 2010) are no-brainers. Hand the young man the biggest scholarship you can offer. Most top-tier high school athletes, however, don’t begin the scratch the surface of the kind of potential that Mason Finley demonstrated in high school.

Another important difference between men’s and women’s scholarships is that men are more likely than women to choose a college or university based on its recent history in cross country or track and field. That tends to drive up the standards necessary for getting a scholarship at the top cross country/track and field programs. More so than women, men tend to disdain being part of a program that is moribund in the lower echelons of their conference.

That’s not to say that available scholarships at lower-tier programs don’t get awarded. It simply says that the top-tier programs definitely get the first pick of the athletes. And so the top schools tend to stay on top. There are very few overnight reversals in the fortunes of men’s cross country or track and field programs.

*******

Great information, as always, from Coach Versaw.

Like I’ve said before, please take this information with a grain of salt and if you have questions I’m happy to answer them in the comments.

What considerations are unique to the world of women’s track and field scholarships?

Having discussed track and field scholarships in general in the last in the previous installment, we now turn our attention to the topic of women’s track and field scholarships.

A few caveats are in order. I come to this discussion from the perspective of the high school coach. Jay Johnson comes from the perspective of the college coach and recruiting coordinator. As such, we don’t necessarily see all the same things.

It’s also the case that my experience with female athletes who have received track and field scholarship offers is rather extensive. That experience will help me to speak from experience about many issues on the women’s side of the ledger. I will need to rely much more heavily on Jay Johnson when we discuss men’s track and field scholarships in the next installment.

Finally, please take the content of this article with a grain of salt. There are no hard and fast rules about who or what level of performance gets a particular level of scholarship. Everything is subject to the idiosyncracies of the particular situation.

**********

Any sheet you might have seen stating that such-and-such a performance puts an athlete in line for a full-ride scholarship should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. Anything you may have heard about minimum standards to get any sort of scholarship is equally baseless.

I know of a 24:xx high school cross country runner who received a fairly substantial athletic scholarship to a community college. I know of a 13.0x 100-meter sprinter who got athletic scholarship money to attend a Division I institution (and this was no obscure DI school). I still scratch my head over both situations and wonder what the respective college coaches knew–or possibly thought they knew–that I didn’t.

A track and field scholarship is least as much about matching desires with opportunity as it is about performances and sliding scales of awards.

I’ve been stunned by the size of some scholarship offers made to athletes I did not regard as top-tier athletes–some of my own athletes and some athletes coming out of programs that my friends coach. Similarly, I’ve been surprised by some comparatively small offers made to athletes I considered to be top-tier prospects. As I mentioned earlier, the rules are anything but hard and fast.

To illustrate how across-the-board offers can be, I’ll discuss of few of the details of two offers one of my former high school athletes received. A major Division I program offered her a substantial athletic scholarship, in excess of 80% of the price of tuition, room and board, and expenses. That school also indicated they’d likely be able to cover most of the rest through academic financial aid normally extended to students of her standing. The same girl was offered what amounted to about a 40% scholarship from a Division II institution.

In this case, the Division II offer was illustrative of a reality faced by numerous scholarship-worthy high school athletes.

In a conversation with the coach at that school, I learned that the program had very little scholarship money to offer that year. Most importantly, it was a low year in their cycle of available scholarship money. Things sometimes work out that way.

They had committed a large amount of money the previous year and those women were a long way from being ready to graduate. Only a couple of scholarship athletes were graduating and no scholarship athletes had left the program that year. Additionally, the school had taken a couple of non-scholarship athletes who had performed well and signed them to partial athletic scholarships for the upcoming year. Consequently, the school had about 1.0 available scholarships to offer to incoming freshmen and they wanted to spread that amount across at least four or five athletes.

My athlete could have been Octavious Freeman or Chelsey Sveinsson and she still would not have approached anything like a full ride from that school. As it was, a 40% scholarship offer represented a substantial vote of confidence from the program.

If you have your heart set on attending a particular school, this story could very well end up being your story. It’s not necessarily a reflection on what you accomplished in high school; it’s a reflection of the current realities within the track and field program at that school.

If, however, a female with a nice running, jumping, or throwing resume is willing to consider multiple schools, the likelihood of a very nice scholarship offer increases dramatically.

As indicated in the preceding article, the supply of track and field scholarships is greater for women than it is for men. And, the demand on that larger number of scholarships is smaller. It’s a cold, hard fact of life that a lower percentage of female than male high school track and field athletes want to go on to compete in college. This situation creates opportunity, and lots of it, for the women who do want to compete.

Without meaning to cast suspicion on what I said before about there being no hard-and-fast rules about certain performances attaching to certain levels of scholarship offers, my experiences suggest that 5K cross country times in the low 18s (at altitude) begin to put a female athlete in line for full-ride consideration. Below 18 minutes and the likelihood that at least one school makes a full-ride offer starts to increase dramatically. Any high school girl who can run sub-20 should be able to attract some scholarship offers somewhere, even at the Division I level. Choices and amounts may be limited, but there are many programs happy to bring in a sub-20 kind of athlete.

I assume those times need to be a little faster for athletes from lower altitudes, though I have been dumbstruck a time or two by the realization that there are a few college coaches from lower altitudes who indicate no appreciation of the effect that altitude has on distance running. To the extent that these coaches recruit by standards of performance, they apply the same standards to athletes from higher and lower elevations. It sometimes worries me that there may be other gaps in the understanding of distance running in the minds of these coaches.

All that said, track times are more important than cross country times, places in big meets are more important than times (at least for cross country), and your relationship with your high school coach matters. Very rarely will a high school coach make it a point to obstruct an athlete’s scholarship opportunities, but successful college coaches do learn to decipher the coded language high school coaches use to indicate an athlete is a disruptive influence or lacks a strong work ethic.

If you’re a female throwing the shot put in the high 30s, you have reason to believe you could have a portion of your college expenses paid for by an athletic scholarship. Reach into the 40s and both the probability and the size of the offer go up–fast.

About 5-5 starts getting serious attention in the high jump. 58-low or faster in the 400. Sub 2:18 in the 800. Over 17 feet in the long jump. Somewhere in the 15s in the 100 hurdles (I am aware there’s a lot of difference between a 15.0 and a 15.9, but I’m similarly aware that I’m not a hurdle guy, so I’ll stick with “somewhere in the 15s.”). 25.xx in the 200. Maybe not at Texas A&M or Oregon, but somewhere in Division I.

Should you abandon all hope if you’re not a threat to attain these marks? Absolutely not, especially not if the passion to run as a scholarship athlete courses through your veins. And the standards–vague and indefinite as the are–are typically even more generous at the Divsion II level.

Particularly if a school has a football program, the athletic department at that school is under intense pressure to maintain the sort of gender equity required by Title IX. This implies that the school will do all they can to bring as many women as they can (within reason, of course) into their athletic programs. Claims that athletic scholarships are routinely extended to warm bodies are mostly exaggerated, but the reality is a very large percentage of girls who regularly place in big invitational meets in high school can also earn athletic scholarship money for college.

It must be understood that the standards for an athletic scholarship at a school like Florida State are much higher than the standards at a school competing in a lower-tier conference. The demonstrated success of certain coaches creates demand to be a part of those programs. Demand drives up the “cost” of getting into the programs. In these cases, the standards for a scholarship may turn out to be extraordinarily high. The vast majority of DI and DII programs, however, provide extensive scholarship opportunities for females coming out of high school cross country and track and field programs.

If the first school you’re interested in doesn’t make an offer, there are many other schools out there with the academic programs you’re interested in. Keep knocking on doors. Keep filling out prospect athlete questionnaires at schools that have what you want in a college. Be willing to make a few phone calls.

This point would apply equally to men as to women, but you should understand the pecking order of scholarship offers. Most schools will target certain recruits and make offers to those recruits, giving them some sort of limited time frame to respond. Until those athletes respond (and there may be two or three layers of these athletes), the offers extended to those targeted athletes typically tie up a large portion of the available scholarships at that school.

If you do not have an offer before National Letter of Intent signing day, it does not necessarily mean you will not get an offer from that school. It does, however, mean you’re not at the top of their list of recruits. Nevertheless, the coach should be good enough to explain a little of where you stand to you and give you some indication of when they might be able to make an offer, if they’re able to make an offer at all.

College coaches who fail to exercise this basic level of human decency have turned off a great many more athletes, parents, and high school coaches than they know. Most of us are okay with knowing we’re not at the top of someone’s list for athletic scholarship–an athletic scholarship offer is not a proposal for marriage. Most of us, however, are not okay with being strung along. Unfortunately, some college coaches string prospects along.

If you’ve been in contact with a program, have had a conversation or two with the coach about running for them, perhaps even made a visit, and you’ve heard nothing about a scholarship amount by the first week in February, you should either a) prepare yourself to be content to walk on, or b) figure no offer is coming and direct your hopes elsewhere. The college coach should already have told you that in a diplomatic sort of way, but some don’t.

For students willing to push out the date of a college commitment, many scholarship offers are routinely made late in a student’s senior year. I’ve received numerous phone calls and e-mails in the April/May time frame inquiring if we have any quality athletes in our program who’ve not yet committed to a school. In some cases, the amount of scholarship money still on the table has been rather substantial.

On a final note, several high school track and field/cross country athletes turn to recruiting services for help finding scholarship offers. There is little doubt that reputable recruiting services can generate offers, often multiple offers, for many athletes. It should be understood going in, however, that most of those offers tend to come from lower-tier programs that generally have difficulty filling their allotments of available scholarships.

There are undoubtedly many cases where the particular schools and athletes turned out to be great matches. In other cases, however, the match may be more problematic. In any case, be willing to seriously investigate the opportunities for you at both the school itself and within its track and field program when considering a scholarship offer generated through a recruiting service.

*********

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that for most readers of this article (and series) the most important two sentences that Alan shared with you are the following, “It’s a cold, hard fact of life that a lower percentage of female than male high school track and field athletes want to go on to compete in college. This situation creates opportunity, and lots of it, for the women who do want to compete.”

I hope this has been helpful and, as Alan said, please take my comments with a grain of salt.

Alan Versaw, The Classical Academy

There’s a sense in which you could say Jay and I talked past each other a little in the first segment of the discussion from high school training to college training. You could, however, look at it from this perspective—Jay’s part touched primarily on training transition for men and my part touched primarily on training transition for women.

Between the two pieces, however, you should be able to glean some useful information. Reading my piece, you may have wondered, “If the danger of getting into an atmosphere that could chew me up and spit me out is as serious as you suggest, how can I steer clear of ending up there in the first place?” Let me focus on that question in this concluding segment.

Here’s what I’d suggest: During the summer between your junior and senior year of high school, go to the official athletic web site for every school you think you might be interested in attending. Then, identify three to five more schools at about the same competitive level and go to their sites as well. If your interests span schools at different competitive levels, do the analysis below separately for each level—the reasons for this will become apparent as you read on.

Once you’re at a school’s site, go to the Track and Field page. If you’re a distance runner, you can go to the Cross Country page and find a shorter list of names to sort through. Then go to the team roster. Carefully note the names and classes of athletes of your gender and your specialty area on the roster. Now, go back through previous rosters. In some cases, you can simply find previous year’s rosters by selecting from a drop box at the top of the roster page. With other programs, you will need to click on “Archives” to look at previous year’s rosters.

Go back two, three, four, and five years and examine closely what proportion of the incoming athletes from each year stayed with the program. Especially note how many freshmen continued with the program their sophomore year, but—for more complete information—track freshman to junior year as well. Calculate a retention rate for each school and coach you’re interested in competing for. Do the same for the 3 – 5 additional schools at roughly the same competitive level. If this information is not available at the web site, you are not out-of-bounds to ask for it politely.

Don’t jump to conclusions yet. You must first understand that no school ever had a 100% athlete retention rate. And sometimes an athlete leaves a school for academic reasons rather than athletic reasons. Although you’re used to thinking of a 65% as a D, that is—in many cases—an excellent retention rate. Finally, bear in mind that retention rates are typically higher for men than women (yet another reason why, in any given year, a school will almost certainly have more available track and field scholarships for women than for men).

Having acknowledged all that, it is now time to compare across schools. Let’s say that you’re looking at six different schools. The freshman-to-junior retention rate for athletes of your gender and specialty over the last five years at these schools are, hypothetically: 60%, 70%, 40%, 30%, 70%, and 50%. Note that these percentages will vary somewhat depending on how competitive the schools you’re looking at are.

Now, what should these numbers tell you? The numbers should be sending up red flags for the schools at the lower end of the spectrum of whatever grouping of schools you’re looking at. On the other hand, in this example, I’d be feeling pretty good about the schools scoring out at 70%. There are reasons why schools competing at roughly the same level show differing retention rates. Ignore these reasons at your own peril.

In fairness, if you’re truly interested in pursuing one or more of the schools with lower retention rates in your target group, you should pose the question directly to the coach, “I looked at athlete retention rates for similar programs and your retention rate is lower than other schools I’m considering. Could you address that concern for me?” This gives the coach a chance to explain what might possibly be unusual circumstances. It allows you to take in information from another perspective before making your decision.

Understand that, should you pose this question, the coach—assuming he/she responds—will make an attempt to put the best possible spin on the question, but it’s valuable to hear the coach out nevertheless. If you ask the question in person, you can pretty well nullify the non-response option. In either case, be alarmed if you sense your question being redirected. Understand also that, if you ask the question in a hostile tone, you likely just torched your scholarship chances at that school.

If you go on an official visit, find opportunities to probe a little about overall team climate, injury frequency, and the like. Don’t keep pressing the issue, but do go on your visit with three or four such questions planned—this is, after all, your opportunity to find out what you’re getting into. Sprinkle the questions in at appropriate moments and probably not when you’re with the entire team. If you’re assigned a team member to escort you through your visit, ask him/her a couple of these questions. Do not let the tone of your questions suggest accusation. Ask more questions indicating a positive outlook than you ask of this type. Word will get around if you’re perceived as a snoopy, suspicious type.

That should be enough for now. I trust the series we’ve done has proven valuable for you. I know it’s been valuable for me listening to Jay’s insights. Jay and I have had discussions on this topic before, but never at this level of detail and candor. As a result, this has been an enormously beneficial exercise for me.

And, please know that you’re welcome to direct further questions you might have back to either of us.

There is one major point I want to make as we wrap up this series, but first I want to reinforce the importance of Alan’s suggestion. Very few families take the time to research the programs they’re interested in, yet for the past 5-6 years every college program’s web site has, just as Alan pointed out, an archive to the the past 3-4 years results and rosters. And while Alan is right on about looking at retention rates I would add something that is as important, if not more important. Which athletes got better in the programs you’re considering? Does this program have athletes who had similar PRs to me who are now running at a high level? These are simple questions and while it will take a few hours to go through the athlete bios for 2-3 programs and their results for the past few years, this is an important step that most families fail to take. We’re all busy and we all wish we had more time; what I’m suggesting will take some time, but you’ll be well served having gone through this exercise as you’ll have a clear picture as to the question, “Do most athletes improve in this program?” Also, wait until you have your list narrowed down to 2-3 schools before you do this as this really would be a waste of time if you’re starting the process with a list of 6 programs.

One other tip, when you arrive on campus you should be willing to learn by observation, watching – even mirroring – the successful upperclassmen on the team to see how this whole thing works. After 2-3 days of careful observation you will no doubt have a question; go into the college coaches office (mornings are usually best) and ask one simple question. It might be, “I know that we stretch during practice, yet I’m wondering if there is any other supplemental stretching I’m supposed to doing during the day or on the weekends?” That may not be the best example of a question, yet that question shows that you’re paying attention during practice, but it also shows that you want to learn your new coaches system, down to the small details such as supplemental stretching to support your training load.

- Are we talking about females or males?

- Are we talking about cross runners who also have nice 800m PRs or kids who were better in cross in the fall than they were in the 3,200m in the spring?

- Is the kid entering a program where the college coach expects them to “contribute*” as a freshman or are they joining a program where they will automatically red-shirt because the cross program is so deep? (Note: most kids would fall between those two extremes in most college distance programs.)

These are the first thoughts that came to my mind when Alan posed this question; obviously I can’t give you, the reader, a blanket answer that will fit your unique situation relative to this question. Also, if you asked 20 good college coaches the same question you will get a wide variety of answers and I don’t want to pretend that my answer is “the answer.” I hope that long preface doesn’t sound like a cop out, but it’s important for your to take my thoughts with a grain of salt. That said, I’m fortunate that to have experience with a wide spectrum of recruits, from 10:00 3,200m runners as a JUCO coach to sub 8:50 3,200m runners as an assistant coach in NCAA Division I.

I called several coaches before I sat down to write this response and two of then said verbatim what I was thinking. They simply said that a good coach will find a way to develop a young man from York HS, a program where the kid ran a lot of miles to run fast (not to mention that he’s had the privilege to in Mr. Newton’s program) but they’ll also be able to coach the kid who ran very little, and maybe played wide receiver on Friday nights and then ran cross races on Saturdays**, to race fast. Think about that for a second – more than one coach (I only polled accomplished coaches) said that it doesn’t matter what the athlete’s training background is and that they can and are willing to work with both types of kid and that they actively recruit both types of kids. Now, I need to be honest that if there are roughly 600+ collegiate distance coaches in the US, I would say only 25% can help both kids reach their genetic potential, but the flip side is we often think that there are only 5-6 capable distance coaches in our country (there’s more), that they all coach NCAA DI (some of the BEST don’t and many good one’s don’t), and that the parent and HS coach have to find the perfect match for Johny or Sally’s training (you’re over thinking it, just find a college coach who is successful year in and year out with a lot of kids, not just one star every few years). That said, my guess is that had I asked this question 10-15 years ago the answer would have have been that most coaches would want the “fast, low mileage kid.” But now many college coaches are realizing that sometimes they run out of time remediating that athlete to “real college training” and that it’s not a bad thing if the kid ran 30, 40, 50, 60 miles per week years freshman through senior, even though 60 miles a week would may have sounded like a lot of miles 15 years ago. But again, the thing to take from this is that a good college coach can recruit either type of kid and help that kid realize their genetic potential.***

Okay, so your probably thinking, “This is by far the worst article in the series – I have no practical information to improve this transition.” Well, here you go, I’ll give you a suggestion and I’ll give at least one story to illustrate the suggestion.

1. Tell kids to wrap their minds around new numbers****

- In college athletes on the track will run the 1,500m and the 3,000m, not the 1,600m and 3,200m; if the kid has a great race is their conference ndoor 3,000m as a freshman they likely came through the the first 1,600m FASTER than they ran the 1,600m as junior. For example, I ran 4:40 for 1,600m as a junior and though I ran that in the Denver area (5,200 ft.) it still only converts to 4:33-4:34 1,600m at sea-level; I ran 8:22 as a freshman in the Big 8 3,000m which is about 4:27-4:28 1,600m pace.

- Similarly, at the Division I level the way you qualify for outdoor nationals is to hit a regional qualifying performance, the you go to one of four NCAA DI regional meets and if you perform well you advance. The regional standard for the women’s 5,000m run is 16:52, which is roughly 5:26 per 1,600m and roughly 10:52 for 3,200m. I haven’t been to a HS meet in a while, but I’m going to say that the 10:52 girl does pretty well in most meets in most states (California the first big exception that comes to mind), yet she has to maintain that pace for 4.5 more laps just to get into the NCAA DI Regional meet, let alone be competitive in that meet.

- For most kids, their long run in HS will become a distance that they will run 3-4 times a week; thus, by the time they come home for winter break their old “easy day loop” is way too short for their new easy day and they might simply run it twice to get the appropriate stimulus. Big change.

2. Athlete: When the college coach sends you your summer instructions do the following:

- Read it; sleep one night.
- Read it again; sleep another night.
- Read it again and email the coach 3 questions about what they’ve written. In this email ask only questions that directly relate to the training guidelines they sent you. Do not ask how many quarters you’ll need for the laundry machine in the dorm or any other question your parents are curious about. Tell the coach you have read their training guidelines three times and that you’re writing to make sure you do not misinterpret the guidelines and that you make smooth training transition.

That said, you might get lucky, like my wife, who when see received her document thought is was a list of “nice to do before showing up on campus” not “must do before showing up on campus or you will be woefully unprepared.” She somehow made it through her freshman year, but to be safe you should contact the coach and make sure you’re doing exactly what they want you to do. Again, keep this separate from any questions about dorm assignments, financial aid, etc. to show the college coach that you’re taking this training transition process seriously…let your parents call Housing to see how many quarter the washing machine takes.

Note: If a parent or coach tries to do #2 themselves then they need to go back and read Part 5 of this series.

3. Parents and HS Coaches: Let the kid do most of the dumb things they did when they got the offer to compete at _____ college/university.

- Brent Vaughn ran fast in HS for 3,200m, something under 8:50. I called him this morning and asked, “How many times a week did you eat fast food spring of your senior year, when you ran well?” Though he took his lunch once a week, he admitted that most weekends he had at least one fast food meal, so he settled on 5-6 times a week. I do not condone this, but I do think that if his HS coach or his parents had tried to help him change his diet the summer prior to college it would be counter productive. Suggestion #1 above will scare any kid who truly wants to be good, which should translate into doing everything they can to be prepared from a training standpoint, yet if the kid was fueled by fast food the past 3 years don’t change that – it’s simply too many variables to try to change at one time.

Quick Soapbox Rant: Every year a parent – actually, that’s not true, every year it’s a mom – asks me if we’re going to discuss “diet and nutrition at camp?” We do and diet and nutrition are important…and NOT NEARLY as important as sleep and hydration. Going to bed earlier than your competition and carrying a water bottle to class aren’t as sexy as saying that you’re “watching your protein intake and supplementing with flax seed oil” but I will take a rested, hydrated burger eater every day over a coffee drinking vegan who thinks Jimmy Falon is way funnier than John Stewart.**** If you want to know more about the importance of regeneration get Hans Selye’s book Stress without Distress as the principles tie together both training, which athletes like to focus on, and regeneration and recovery, which athletes like to deceive themselves into thinking is less important that training. Training and regeneration are equally important – you can’t “absorb” the training without a regeneration phase, which is a long way of saying “get enough sleep to support your training.”

- This is not the summer for the kid to do a lot of new things – if they simply do the same things they’ve done previous summers, while following an anal (yes, anal) interpretation of the training guidelines sent by their new coach, they’ll likely enter college excited, refreshed and ready for the challenges I discussed in part 5.

…well, I think that’s a decent list. The other things I sorta want to suggest I’m not sure the majority of college coaches would agree with, so I’ll keep those to myself. Please feel free to write a comment below as your comment(s) will likely help Alan and I write the wrap-up to both this question and the series. Thanks for your time.

*HS coach, athlete and parents should all know the answer to this before the kid agrees to go to any school; it shouldn’t be that hard for the college coach to answer.

**Think this is is a streach? Well, that’s what Olympian Christian Smith (800m, 2008) did in high school.

***No doubt that statement has infuriated one out of three HS coaches reading this. Do you disagree? My recommendation is that you share your story about the kid who went to _____ and didn’t get better in the comments below, and state your name. It will help make this article a better resource for other HS coaches.

****Took me a while to figure this out, but every kid, if you pay attention in the recruiting process, will give up some big “tells” as to who they are and how they lead their lives. If a kid loves Jimmy Fallon then I know they stay up later than the kid who has never seen the Colbert Report. And this is important because the first kid probably gives better phone, but I want a kid who, when presented with the exciting options and opportunities that dorm life have to offer^, chooses the less exciting, but realistic “monastic method” of sleep, wake, study, train, eat, study, repeat.

^XBox/Weii at the benign end, bongs in the middle, while the opposite end has been omitted here so as not to scare moms or give college freshmen, especially adventure seeking young men, any ideas.

Alan Versaw, The Classical Academy

Once the state meet, or the last post-season meet of the summer, has come to a close, the athlete falls under the tutelage and care of the college coach. If, as a high school coach, you cannot accept that situation, the problem lies on your end. I confess, there have been times I’ve had trouble letting go, especially when quite capable athletes have struggled under the new system. In those cases, the problem has been on my end. I definitely did not call, text, or e-mail every other day, but I spent too much time with my thoughts turned in the direction of the problems of graduated athlete. Such an individual’s performances no longer fall under my job description.

So, if grown adults ought to be able to pass an 18-year-old athlete from one professional’s care to another’s, what’s at issue here? Why is the topic even arising in a discussion of college recruiting?

The topic arises on two fronts. First, sometimes-dramatic changes in training can be enormously troubling to the psyche of the high school athlete. Second, the tendency of some college coaches to play the “inadequately trained in high school” card can be damaging to relationships between coaches at high school and college levels. So, similarly, can the tendency of high school coaches to make too-public observations about how much better the athlete performed in high school be damaging to these relationships.

Let’s take the situation of the athlete-in-transition first.
If an athlete has performed well enough in high school to be actively recruited by college programs, it is usually safe to infer that the high school coach’s training has worked well for that athlete. Yet, the college-level training frequently represents a dramatic change for the athlete, and particularly so for the female distance runner. All too often, young women who flourished at 35 to 40 miles per week of volume struggle with injuries and performances alike at 60 to 75 miles per week. Legion are the shipwrecks of gifted female high school runners who never made the adjustment–some physically, some psychologically, and some both—to the college level of training. Universally labeling such athletes as “weak” is a cop-out of the highest order. “Weak” is the plan that doesn’t figure out what to do with a gifted individual who, at least for the present, can’t handle more than 50 miles per week.

Are body changes sometimes (one) part of the picture here? Assuredly, yes. But, maybe it’s not too much to suggest that unrealistic training expectations sometimes contribute as well. I know of college women who were recruited on the promise that they would be taken upwards in training volume along a carefully designed and monitored plan. Later, they discover the carefully designed plan involved ramping up their mileage by upwards of 60% over a period of a few short weeks.

Are body changes sometimes (one) part of the picture here? They can be, yes, but if that is the first (or, worse yet, the only) place we’re looking for answers, we’re going to be missing a lot of important data. Maybe it’s not too much to suggest that unrealistic training expectations sometimes contribute as well. I know of college women who were recruited on the promise that they would be taken upwards in training volume along a carefully designed and monitored plan. Later, they discover the carefully designed plan involved ramping up their mileage by upwards of 60% over a period of a few short weeks.

I have never heard a college coach describe his or her training program as falling under the “throw the eggs against the wall and keep the ones that don’t break” heading, but—from the outside looking in–some programs evoke images of that model. The eggs that break generally leave the program and are never heard from again, but you could make several impressive XC teams of each year’s broken eggs IF ONLY you could restore the scorched-over desire to run. Most often, you can’t.

With all due respect, I think the high school model holds some important lessons for the college coach (and I don’t doubt for a second that the converse is also true). At the high school level, we do not hold the power of the scholarship. Each season, we are compelled to work with the kids who pay the activity fee and show up for the first day of practice. If ever you will succeed, you must learn two rules—the kids must enjoy what they’re doing and they must stay healthy. If it is no longer rewarding, there is no scholarship hindering their free will to leave the program. There are no expendable crewmen on the Starship High School XC, at least not in my quadrant of the galaxy.

Now to the question of the relationships between high school and college coaches….

I confess that I tend to bristle when I hear a first or second-year college runner being described as “inadequately trained.” Jay Johnson made a great point in his closing comments on the role of the high school coach. He said, “The answer across most colleges – public and private, prestigious and not – is that many HS students find their workload in college, from a strict academic standpoint, less challenging than their typical HS day which consisted of 2 AP classes, the Honor Society meetings, volunteer work in the counseling office during lunch, followed by track practice in the afternoon.” Even with that description, Jay only began to scratch the surface of the academic experience of the kids I coach at The Classical Academy.

With the exception of a select few schools—and you know the names—college kids are in class about 14 hours a week. Well, at least they’re scheduled to be in class that many hours. Compare that to the closely-monitored 33 hours per week in the classroom at the high school level, all the while being reminded of how much colleges want to see well-rounded (loosely translated as “overcommitted”) applicants. Truth be told, with all of the other commitments my runners have that I have little or no influence over, I’m maxing out a large majority of my kids by asking them to run up to 40 miles per week during the school year.

Note to all high school athletes reading this: You don’t have to do every activity on the planet before graduating from high school–it’s okay to say no to things that people want you to do but which end as added layers of stress.

Yes, if I had the will to do this sort of thing, I could get a few of our runners to go to 60 to 70 miles per week and make a percentage of those who do reach that level achieve better things than they could before. But, in the process, I would lose most of the team and the experiences that make us a team. Paradoxically, if we were a 60 to 70-mile-per-week team, we would never have made it to NXN. We needed the girls for whom 35 miles per week was all they could muster, but who were PLEASED to give THEIR team that much.

If you’re a college coach muttering about undertrained athletes, consider that there would be a whole lot fewer (especially young women) to select from if they were trained to the standards that you would prefer. Are you sure you’d be able to outcompete the other schools to sign the ones remaining in the pool of talent?
Now, about the sin of high school coaches muttering too loudly about how the kid has never done as well in college as they did in your high school program…

First, that may be true in some cases and some events, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it broadly true for any high school coach. We all ought to take some humility from that observation. It’s also worth saying that training for, say, the 800 in college is highly specialized to… the 800. It’s not particularly relevant if this individual you coached in high school ran a better 5K in high school than in college if his/her college training is geared toward the 800. It might be relevant if he/she is being trained for the 5K, but beware of lurking variables (and plenty of variables lurk in the lives of college students, lest we too hastily dismiss the memories of our own pasts).

I know of several off-the-charts-great high school coaches in Colorado. And, I periodically check up on how their graduates do in college. You know what I’ve learned? In most cases, they’re doing even better in college. Quite a bit better. Yes, our hearts feel for the ones who go to college and have their running careers fall apart. But, don’t let the trees keep you from seeing the forest.

With that cliché, I sign off.

Alan Versaw, The Classical Academy

With this segment, we wrap up the topic of the role of the high school coach. At the bottom of this installment, you will find links to all other pieces of the series and to a valuable resource that Coach Micah Porter (D’Evelyn High School, Lakewood, CO) has made available.

Coach Porter provided us with the template of a single-page introduction to his recruitable athletes that he sends out to college coaches. With some sensitive information concealed, Micah has let us see the “promos” for Kevin Williams and Tim Muller–introductions that have been warmly received by the college coaches to whom they were sent. Coach Porter’s work puts a spotlight on a positive way coaches can help their athletes be recruited.

It wasn’t exactly what I set out to learn, but one thing I learned pretty clearly from the last installment—there are lots of high school coaches out and about casting for the same answers that I am. Misery loves company.

It’s pretty much a given that colleges will be clamoring over the Foot Locker finalists, the top 40 or so individuals at NXN, and many state champions. We, as high school coaches, typically don’t need much help getting notice for the kids who happen to fall into one or more of these categories. The question for most of us is, “What to do for that athlete who is clearly good enough to run at some level of college competition but isn’t necessarily at the level where he/she is hard not to notice?”

One thing that I think I’ve learned this year is that the college-bound student athlete should probably keep a few more irons in the fire than the typical college-bound student. High school seniors who have no intention of competing in college athletics probably don’t need to apply to more than two or three schools, unless the schools they apply to are highly selective (think Stanford, Michigan, MIT, Ivy League, and the like). College-bound student-athletes probably should keep a few more options open. I think I’ll start making that suggestion.

Why would the college-bound student-athletes want to keep more options open? I recently learned the hard way that even if a student is a good match for a school–academically, athletically, and socially–the school may not share that perspective and may not offer enough financial aid to sustain the pulse of the student’s hopes and dreams. The coach at that school may decide they’re already top-heavy in your student-athlete’s best event and decide not to offer any scholarship assistance at all—at least not initially.

And, let’s face it, for many athletically-inclined high school seniors, athletic accomplishment can be the ticket to getting into a school they could not otherwise afford. As long as I’m dealing with some athletes from families of modest means, this implies that it just might be worth keeping options alive at more than two or three schools.

During slower periods of the year, I’m going to probe a little more with college coaches about the profile of the student-athlete they want to match with scholarship assistance. Being a math teacher, I’m cool with formulas. I realize a lot of college programs have formulas they like to use. I’ve made up my mind to figure out more of the formulas in circulation. The trouble here is that the “published” formula doesn’t always correspond in every detail with the formula actually in use. That’s a lesson that has gradually been impressed on me over the last several years.

One thing I failed to mention in the opening piece is that every college coach seems to have a specialty. Very few programs are great across a spectrum of events. This is also so, maybe even particularly so, for distance programs. Understanding this, I believe, is a crucial part of matching your kids with the right program. David Smith at Oklahoma State is a 5K/10K guy. Mark Wetmore enjoys almost all of his success at the steeple, 5K, and 10K. Jason Vigilante? The 800 and 1500, of course.

If you have that high-level kind of athlete, these considerations should enter into your discussions with that athlete. Regardless of the coach’s reputation, you want to give some extra consideration before sending a pure XC kind of guy (or girl) to a program that has its best success at 8s and 15s (this is not a dig on Jason Vigilante, by the way—the caution could just as easily be to give some extra consideration before sending your 1:53 800 runner into a program that regularly turns out some of the top 5Ks in the nation).

Simply stated, to the extent possible, try to discern the strengths of the coaches your athletes are considering. Be willing to talk to your athlete, and the parents, about these things.

PDFs from Micah Porter, D’Evelyn HS

Kevin Williams template

Tim Muller template

Okay, I’m going to be a little more blunt than I’ve been in the past as a great friend of mine read the posts thus far and said that while they were informative, I was definitely holding back.

****Track and Field can be subcategorized into four event areas: Sprint/Hurdles, Throws, Distance, Jumps/Multis

One of the questions that came up in the comments on previous installments in this series concerns the role of the high school coach in the process. Seeing that a lot of the traffic both on Jay’s web site and on my own comes from high school coaches, this topic seems especially important to address.

This series of articles had its beginnings in my frustrations with the college recruiting process. And, some of those frustrations center around this very topic. I do not seem to have landed yet on a highly effective strategy for helping athletes through this process.

Alan Verswa, The Classical Academy

College admissions offices and scholarship committees want letters of recommendation. Prospective employers want references. College track and field/cross country coaches? I’m not sure exactly what they want, but different coaches (or, perhaps more accurately, different recruiting coordinators) want different things. This does not make the high school coach’s job any easier.

Here are some of my hunches about what’s at the root of problem. First, as Jay alluded in a response to a comment sent in, recruiting coordinators tend to be young, energetic types. Unfortunately, both youth and energy tend to diminish with increasing age. I guess that’s a way of saying that we should expect a high degree of turnover in these positions. High turnover probably tends to generate lower levels of consistency. Second, I have little doubt that many recruiting coordinators who have lasted more than a year or two have been permanently jaded by the glowing reports they received about prospective recruits who eventually proved to be cancers once on the team. Coaches bend the truth in seeding meetings, so why wouldn’t they bend the truth in telling colleges about their top athletes? So it is that our very own actions wage war against our most heartfelt desires. Finally, one universal refrain I hear from college coaches is that they have zero extra time to devote to recruiting (more on this in a later installment). Loosely translated, I think this means that few of them are going to take the time to carefully read what high school coaches do send them.

Despite what I said in the last sentence, I send college coaches and recruiting coordinators information about prospect athletes. I do it knowing that my e-mail messages are likely to be either promptly deleted or only skimmed over. I do it on the hope that it does genuine good every once in a while. I do it because I like to think I’d read those messages if the roles were reversed. I do it in hopes of building relationships with those charged with identifying and persuading prospective recruits. I do it out of reciprocity for all that the student-athletes have given me over the spans of their high school careers.

One of the reasons I described Jay Johnson as an A+ recruiter in the introductory segment to this series was that he actually solicited information from me about the athlete he was recruiting. He probed. He wanted to know something about the individual beyond times and places. He got the information he needed about who that athlete was as a person, but I’ve learned since that time that his procedure is not the norm.

So, what process do I try to follow when I have an athlete who is capable of competing at the collegiate level? Here’s a brief summary:

* In the spring of his/her junior year, at the latest, I check to see if there is interest in continuing to the collegiate level. If not, the process ends there. If there is indecision, we talk. If there is genuine interest, I ask them to identify some schools where they think they might be interested in running. Lately, I’ve added a brief form for them to fill out. It asks them to identify interests in terms of types of schools (large vs. small, private vs. state school, Christian vs. secular, high-profile programs vs. lower-profile programs, engineering vs. liberal arts, etc.) they are interested in attending. We discuss the levels of school (DI, DII, DIII, NAIA) for which the athlete’s accomplishments merit consideration.
* Later, we discuss their lists of potential schools. To the extent that I am competent in this area, we talk about what these schools can offer them academically. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of training in climates different from what they are accustomed to. We look at rosters and past results for these programs and try to identify how the competitive levels of the teams mesh with the students’ goals and personalities. We look for clues regarding the personalities of the programs. Following this, I encourage them to make some sort of initial contact with the schools they are most interested in. Most frequently, they will fill out the prospective athlete questionnaire on the school’s athletic web site. I’m increasingly of the opinion, however, that submitting this form serves only moderately well as an initial contact. Sometimes, our athletes have received calls from coaches the same day the form was submitted. More often, the athletes who complete these online forms never hear a thing. Unfortunately, more effective forms of initial contact don’t feel as non-threatening to most prospects.



* Following the initial contact by the prospect, I send a brief, introductory e-mail about this individual to the coaches at the schools they have contacted. I didn’t always do this in the past, but I do it now. I get a response to this e-mail somewhere around 40% of the time.



* Assuming the individual in question shows some improvement in his/her senior cross country season (and we have an excellent record of our runners showing improvement as seniors), I will send out a second e-mail to the coach sometime late in the cross country season informing him/her of how things have progressed during the season. I get a response to this e-mail maybe a little over 10% of the time. As a part of both this e-mail and the previous e-mail, I invite the coach to get back to me with any questions they have about the prospect.



* I encourage the prospect to maintain contact with the coaches at the schools they are interested in attending. Perhaps the most difficult issue prospects face is inquiring about the possibility of an official visit. I’ve just about concluded that official visits involving more than 50 miles of travel go only to the very highest tier of recruits. Personal humility is stressed from day one in our program and that message seems to resonate with almost all of our kids. Unfortunately (or maybe not-so-unfortunately), this translates into them being ill-at-ease with almost any form of self-promotion. More than once, I’ve wondered if we’re not getting many offers of official visits because we’re not knocking loudly enough on that door. Insight, anyone?



* I urge all of my prospects to send notes of closure and appreciation to all who have recruited them once they do sign with a particular school. This is simply a matter of basic human civility. Many have done this before I prompted them to do it. If the coach/recruiter has sent me a response at any point in the season, I will send them a note at this time, too, thanking them for their efforts. In case you hadn’t noticed, I enjoy writing.



* I derive no joy from confrontation, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid it, either. I’m hardwired to take a stand rather than recede into the background. If a coach/recruiter is stringing a prospect along beyond National Letter of Intent Day, I will send a polite note asking them to play straight with the prospect. By this time, if not sooner, the coach/recruiter should have given any prospect they’ve been keeping contact with a clear statement of where they stand (One way of making a clear statement is to truthfully tell them, “We need to wait and see what the responses of our first tier of recruits are before we know if we can make an offer. We expect to notify you by [insert a reasonably proximate date here]. ”). If the recruiter or coach has not let the prospect know where he/she stands within a few days of the opening of the signing period, I will make a contact with that coach. I doubt this practice has won me many friends, but what I am asking for is simply a matter of courtesy. Treat others as you would have them treat you.

I’d be lying if I told you that the results of this strategy have been highly satisfying in a large majority of instances. So, it’s not at all strange that I would seek to open a conversation on this topic. I eagerly look forward to what Jay has to say in response and what you readers respond with, in turn.

More than anything else, my purpose in engaging in the process is to help the prospect find a program where he/she will have a positive experience with running and competing. We have an extremely close team (both boys and girls), and I’ve witnessed from a distance a few profoundly disappointing experiences of some of our graduates who have gone off to teams where cattiness prevailed, where the road to the top was over the fallen bodies of teammates, and where individual goals reigned supreme. I’m learning better how to identify those schools in advance, but I’m still on the steep part of that curve. I stay involved in the process these days because I know it’s worth a king’s wages for every second spent in that process if things work out right.

I’m a new parent and the most surprising thing is not how much fun it is and how loud you laugh when the kid “toots” as you’re changing their diaper. It’s how much advice – and specific advice, no less – you receive from people who are not parents. I assume their thinking is, “I’m a human and so I have an innate understanding of how to raise a human.” And while that rationale, that “theoretical knowledge,” isn’t completely absurd the reality of parenthood is that it’s other parents, those with experiential knowledge, who best understand what you are going through.

Why am I talking about parenthood and not recruiting? Last week the question posed to me was, “How much scholarship money can/should high school athletes (and their parents!) expect to receive coming into college?” and on that topic I have, just like a parent, experiential knowledge. But on this week’s question – “What should the role of the HS coach be during the recruiting process be?” – I’m basically clueless. Yes, I’ve been through HS and yes I’ve worked with HS kids (150 kids a summer for the past 6 summers at camp) and, yes, I’ve coached track and cross country, but to say that I know what an appropriate role for the HS coach is in the recruiting process is like asking a capable adult, but not a parent, if a 3-month-old should “cry it out” at night or if the kids should be in a “family bed” – or if the kid should start with the family bed, via the attachment parenting worldview, and move to the “let the kid cry until they fall asleep,” sort of the compassionate abandonment view. I digress.

Everything that follows is opinion…

and since your time is valuable and finite, I will not be offended if you decide to stop reading this and check your email.

Seriously, it’s fine, ’cause when you think about it, my view of the HS coach’s role in the recruiting process was somewhat twisted. My view was basically, “How can I most quickly, most efficiently learn what I want/need to know about Suzy Q to ensure that she’s a good fit for us and that we’re a good fit for her?” Or, if you’re a hard-core cynic you could twist the end of that statement to “ensure she’s a good fit for us and that we’re a good fit for her…but only because that means she’ll be happy and she’ll be a good fit for us.” That was not my view, but it’s not an unthinkable view either.

Okay, here are my opinions on the role of the HS coach in the recruiting process:



- The longer the coach has been coaching and the more college athletes they’ve coached the more their input/influence can be beneficial to both the student/family and the college coach/program.



- If the kid is really good and the coach is really young then 99% of the time the coach’s ego is, at least in a small way, tied up in where the kid goes. Good news is that this young coach will soon, with more success, become the coach above. The bad news is they currently this young coach is a pain in the rear for the college coach and the can, potentially, get the kid and the family focused on the wrong variables.



- HS coaches know WAY MORE about this process than most HS guidance counselors. My story: I loved Mrs. Olsen, my counselor at DCHS, like a second mom yet she had no clue what a 4:25 1,600m runner should receive in the Big 8 Conference. The answer, of course, is nothing and the 27 ACT I had simply meant I was 0.2 lower than the “average” student at CU. No academic money, no athletic money… and the second best choice I ever made



- Story: When Alan first posed this question in an email I literally pictured two local coaches, both national-caliber coaches by ANY definition, because of how much I trust their opinion in this process. Why did I picture these two coaches? They both, separately, told me some version of “I want to be honest with you that ____ isn’t the best person we’ve had on this team. I don’t want to hurt their chances of getting a college education, but I also want to be honest with you because I respect your program.” Both these coaches knew the following: if they “sell” us a kid that isn’t a quality person then they hurt the next kid in their program who is a great athlete AND a great person. I should note that this is a story from my CU days, so these were good athletes if we were considering giving them a scholarship in the Big 12. I should also note that both of the athletes who didn’t get their HS coach’s endorsement were failures as college athletes, yet both coaches have had MULTIPLE kids go on to be NCAA DI All-Americans.



- The kid should do the majority of the work in this process; if they can’t, then I know that personally I don’t want to coach them at the college level. Why? Well – and this is an extreme example – I won’t be the coach who gets them out of their dorm room and walks them to class, though other college coaches, especially in other sports, view that as part of their job (and this happens on EVERY campus in the BCS schools in at least one sport). So, kids should send the initial emails, kids should follow up those emails with a voice mail, kids should walk their butt down to the counselors office and tell the administrative assistant, as nicely as they can, that they need their transcripts faxed to both the NCAA Clearninghouse and ____ schools. Of the 10-20% remaining the majority should be parents parenting – telling the kid they can’t afford 40k a year but they can afford 15k a year – things like that. If those two things happen then the HS coach can do, in my humble opinion, the most important thing for their HS program: they can walk the halls, they can spy on the mile time trial in gym class or whatever good coaches do to recruit more kids, maybe the next stud athlete, to their program. The best HS distance programs in the country do two things: they make distance running cool, attracting better athletes (and yes, attracting them “away” from other sports) and they practice when others do not. The HS coaches I’m friends with let the kids and the parents do the majority of the work in the college recruiting process while they worry about their internal, on-site recruiting.



…pretty strong opinion for someone who has never been a HS coach – take it or leave it.



- Alan’s template is great; follow it and the kid, the family, and the college coach will likely be happy with the process.



- The HS coach, in the rare case that they are coaching “the one,” i.e. the Footlocker Champion as a junior, can set up a system to keep the family from being overwhelmed…but the HS coach has to set it up so it doesn’t look like some power broker, AAU basketball thing. Again, I have no clue how this is done but someone will no doubt suggest something simple and sensible in the comments.



That’s enough…and somewhat gross to see how much I can write on a topic on which I have no experiential knowledge. I hope Alan’s next question relates to something I’ve done…hiking the Colorado Trail perhaps? Thanks for your time.

…and yes, this is how I am in person – no affectation here.

Recruiting Rant 001 from CoachJayJohnson on Vimeo.

Response to a comment from the Recruiting Give and Take: Part II – the comment was posted on co.milesplit.us by “xcfreak58.”

Response to a comment from the Recruiting Give and Take: Part II – the comment was posted on co.milesplit.us by “xcfreak58.”

My comments are italicized; Alan’s comments begin after his photo.

Great comments on both the co.milesplit.us site and as well as www.coachjayjohnson.com and, rather than try to answer those individually at this time, I would like to offer the following as a conclusion to this question.

There were no comments or questions specific to the issue, “If an athlete runs ____ what size of scholarship can they expect?” And in some ways it’s great that money is not the primary issue in the comments appearing on both sites. That being said, if you are a parent reading this and your son has run 1:54 and 4:10 as a junior you can, and should, be thinking, “If he improves a little as a senior he should get the majority of his education paid at an academically prestigious school.” That’s totally fair… and I called some college coaches to make sure I was on track by saying that sub 1:54 and sub 4:10 is pretty good. And if you’re the parent of young women who as a junior will run 2:12 and 4:54 this year you should be thinking the same thing.

That said, most students who have good grades and who have run fast have an interesting continuum of options by the middle of their senior year; big scholarship offers from schools they’re not interested (yep, that sucks) and small offers or 0%, i.e. walk-on offers, at academically prestigious schools (yep, you want that education but the offer is small). What to do as a family?

Be honest about how important the scholarship is and have a candid family meeting about it. In my family it was simple – I wanted to walk on at CU, turning down the DII offer that would have paid 80% (I forget the athletic and academic breakdown – I had good, not great, test scores and was a 4:30 kid at the time – decent, but not great). My parents said that we could afford CU, provided I work each summer to earn any and all money needed for my super cool, super trusty 1979 Ford F150 truck (two-wheel, not four-wheel, drive, but still very cool…arguably the only reason my wife initially dated me). I was quite nervous having that conversation with my parents, but it was a conversation that needed to happen. If you’re a family that cannot afford to send your son or daughter to a school that costs $40,000 a year, yet your son or daughter will get 80% of their education paid for at a school that costs $16,000 a year, then you need to explain to your son or daughter how important the scholarship money is. The flip side is that many students don’t need the money and the scholarship becomes an ego issue for – in rank order – dad, HS coach, mom… with my experience being that the student athlete couldn’t care less and is dying to run at the school that annually makes the NCAA Cross Country meet but is only offering 20%.

Okay, that’s enough – tons of great questions to answer, but please give us time to coordinate our thoughts and efforts.

Alan Versaw, The Classical Academy

Jay went first, so I get to try to tie this thing off this time.

As a high school coach, I’d be deliriously happy if a much higher percentage of college coaches talked candidly with prospects about the amounts of athletic scholarship aid they are likely to be able to offer prospects. Absolutely, the actual amount will vary from prospect to prospect, but a simple disclaimer such as I’ve shown below could forestall no end of misunderstandings and ill feeling:

“We bring in approximately twelve women per year on some form of athletic scholarship. We average 3.8 full scholarship equivalents per year and must distribute that amount among the roughly twelve individuals we bring in on scholarship each year. Another ten to twenty athletes come in each year as walk-ons, with no initial scholarship support, but with the prospect of earning such support as their performances merit. If you are a top-level prospect, this gives you some sort of idea of what level of support we might be able to bring you in on. Understand also that it’s likely that the amount and timing of these individual award offers will vary somewhat based on the responses (accept/decline) of the highest level prospects that we recruit in any given year. If you are a high-achieving student, you may also come in line for assistance in the form of academic scholarships. For more information about academic scholarships, contact…”

Long life experiences have taught me that the costs of candor and full disclosure in the short term are easily overwhelmed by the costs of ill-feeling, unfavorable word of mouth, and distrust in the long term.

A statement like the one above could be posted on the prospect athlete questionnaire on the school’s athletic web site. It could be included in the mass mailings that so many schools send out to athletes who earn high places in state cross country and track meets. It could be added to the first e-mail exchange with the prospect athlete. Somehow, get this information out and abroad. Obviously, different circumstances dictate different notices for male and female prospects.

Speaking of the differences between male and female prospects, it is not merely the supply-side of different numbers of scholarships available for men and women that drives the differences in awards. There’s also a demand-side to this equation. A few years ago, a college coach (and it may have been Jay Johnson, but I can’t say for sure) told me that if you talked to the top 50 finishers in the boys state cross country meet, you’d find out that 48 wanted to go on and run in college. If you talked to the top 50 finishers in the girls state cross country meet, you’d find out that 10 wanted to go on and run in college. I’m guessing that figure of 10 has risen some in the interim, but it’s still true that a larger percentage of the guys than the girls nurture a strong desire to compete at the college level. The implication here, then, is that an expression of interest in running by the 40th-place girl at the state cross country meet is likely to grab a college recruiter’s attention a lot more quickly than an expression of interest from the 40th-place boy. Even this year, I’ve heard of athletic scholarship offers being extended to girls who missed the top 100 (all classifications combined) of the Colorado state cross country meet; I feel safe in saying that opportunity would never arise for a boy finishing outside of the top 100.