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Cross country is traditionally a pretty high-volume sport at our school, attendance-wise. Soccer isn't huge there, and though football entices a weird amount of tiny freshman, they usually look at themselves after a year or so and think, "my future might not be in a sport with a ton of physical contact" and find their way to cross country. But between a very successful swimming program, and the two most high-profile sports not only occurring in the spring (lacrosse and baseball) but "requiring" pretty extensive and specific winter training programs, we have a ton of attrition that usually leaves me with a distance group of about 1/5 to 1/3 of the size of the cross country team.
Last season, though, we got a small jump in size and a huge jump in commitment. I had a dozen kids who gave me blood and vomit* every single day and we scored the highest proportion of our conference meet points from the distance group than we had since I've been there. We didn't lose a whole lot in the way of talent (two solid contributors, but no high point-earners) but graduation did cost us a pair of kids who did a ton to make the environment into something that was both positive *and* still pushed people to do better.
I pretty deliberately steer away from sports psychology jargon because:
a)I don't think most of the people who use it are smart enough or have sufficient training to talk about something as complex as how we think.
b)it usually strikes me as an obstacle, rather than an aid, to connecting with athletes on an individual level.
... and as a result, my ideal has always been to have a group of distance runners that governs themselves. This probably isn't practical for other sports, but for us, one of the most important parts of the seasons occurs entirely outside the purview of coaches: summer mileage. I can monitor kids' workload and maximize their chances of success with carefully balanced workouts - but if they don't put in the requisite base of mileage in the summer then there's a pretty severe upper limit on their likely success. The short way to put this is: they have to want to put the work in themselves.
Last season went well because these seniors created an environment where their teammates wanted to come out and work - treat every practice seriously and race like they wanted to hurt feelings every weekend. I'm hoping that will trickle down even without them, and we have some seniors now that are more talented than them *and* definitely work at making sure everybody moves forward together. But I'm not ignoring the possibility that last year's crowd was special.
In any case, pretty much the only thing that I've accomplished that I can put a tangible milestone on is that a new kid has run under 2:00 in the 800m every single season. That's not a big deal in a track rich area, but we're a small school in a small state and it's not nothing. But I'd still like to add to it. This year I'm hoping to:
a)see our 4x800m team under 8:00 b)see one of our kiddeaux run under 10:00 for the two mile c)see one of our kiddeaux run under 4:30 for the one mile
We'll see how it goes. There's still one more cross country meet, but practice starts in about two weeks.
*this is figurative. keeping kids healthy is important to me, but talking a big game about our hard work is, regrettably, part of the job. ______________________________
"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"
--Walleye's Dad
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