>At my high school, the 400 has and seemingly always will be
>the most coveted event. The coaches are obsessed with it. My
>freshman year our 4X4 team finished top 3 in the state with a
>sub 3:20 and most of the subsequent teams were state
>qualifiers too. The girls team has produced some really good
>400 runners too. My school has never had a problem with
>convincing kids to commit to the 400.

We have a strong individual history with the 400m, led primarily by an alum who is a volunteer coach and our school record holder in the event. His record is strong (sub-47) but we've actually never put together a team that's run under 3:20. That's primarily a depth issue, because we've definitely had the runners to do it but they're usually burdened with 2+ other events by the time the 4x400m rolls around.

The 4x800m has a similar appeal to our distance crowd, as we've put together some very strong (via Penn and New Balance performances) teams there, but the pull hasn't spread to the sprinters at all.

My hope is to build up a tradition where this kind of legacy takes care of itself, with a little custodianship from coaches. That sounds a lot like what you're describing at your school.

>There's so much emphasis on this event though and imo, very
>little attention given to the 800. I always felt like the
>1600/3200 runners always had their separate regime as they
>were mostly cross-country runners. Middle distance 800 runners
>though? They were on the own island it seemed.

Yeah, it's a lot clearer in college where the presence of 5K/10K guys effectively excludes 800m runners from the distance group with the exception of the occasional crossover workout. High school is different, though, unless you have a big enough team - which we don't. 800m runners pretty much have to be either/or at our school and the answer is pretty much always "distance" for us.

>There was a very, very good runner I graduated with who went
>on to run at Cornell. He was mostly a sprinter, but would run
>the 800 when it came to the post-season. He ran about a 1:55
>and I believe placed at the state level. I can't imagine how
>fast he would have been if he had fully trained for the 800.

Some 800m guys really seem to benefit by working one side of the road or the other for awhile. A lot of our event-group lines are dependent on the very mutable off-season habits of high schoolers. The kid in question in the OP and another sprinter who I'd love to focus on the 800m (but who has more potential at 200/400 than his teammate) are both on the cross country team. In a hypothetical world where they both do the summer running that we recommend (35-50 mpw) and work through cross country, I'd actually be in favor of them training as sprinters and living off of that base all the way through May. But the base has to be there for 800m, in my view.

>As far as your original post, I'm struggling for any good
>answers. I've worked in education as a teacher/counselor for
>the past decade plus and can tell you that every kid is unique
>and is motivated in different ways. I'm sure you already know
>that, but I don't want you beating yourself up searching for
>the perfect sales pitch.

Yep. I wouldn't have brought this one here if it weren't for his explicit appeal to an implicit racial divide in the track distances. I don't actually think that's the sum of his reasoning, particularly when the far easier answer is that training for and racing the 800m is a pretty unpleasant way to spend one's time.

The push for him to move up is going to be an ongoing conversation and not a silver bullet. But because I've literally never had a runner specifically say "nope - that event is for white kids" I wanted some tools for taking him at his word. You're right, of course, that whatever the right approach is - it'll be weirdly and carefully designed to the individual kid. And it might fail anyhow.

>It's really hard to get inside the mind of a high schooler. I
>know just myself, I really had an irrational way of viewing
>things. I'll forever hold guilt for allowing one bad injury
>and confrontation with a coach stop me from continuing to play
>baseball in high school. I was too hard-headed to play the
>sport I excelled at most. I 100% committed myself to football
>only - which I experienced a lot of success in. However, I
>really wish I would have approached things differently and
>committed myself to basketball and baseball more. I ran track
>btw - but was just a marginal contributor.

Yep. Our weird high school brains just aren't often enough put together for the simple logic of "you can be very, very good at this sport and therefore should maybe pursue it most seriously".

Now that I'm old and my body is increasingly creaky and useless, I'm SUPER smart about what I should have done when I was sixteen. Blargh.