I'll throw this one to the crowd and try to stat it as simply as possible.

1. I coach cross country and distance running. In area high schools, this sport is probably 95% white.

2. My two best underclassmen this year are black. There is a not-small club track scene in my area that's a bit more diverse, even in the distances, but neither one of these kids comes from the club track system. They're new to the sport and are just good at it.

3. I've found that kids don't typically like to give up on their favorite sports until they are juniors or seniors. It's not a hard and fast rule, but when the chances of playing football, basketball, baseball, or lacrosse in college start to look a bit diminished, that's usually when I get them.

So that's the framework. I've had a pretty strong stance since I've been doing this that I don't give the hard-sell to underclassmen. I love track, but I understand when kids point to the team dynamic and just plain fun of the above sports and say "I prefer those." I played baseball instead of track until my senior year, so I get it entirely.

But in the last year, I've come to realize that the structure of the recruiting season means I need to work harder to get strong performances out kids when they're juniors, not just seniors. That doesn't mean pushing them in ways that don't work, but it probably means trying to tell more freshmen and sophomores that "you can be DI good at this if you decide to start treating it as your primary athletic interest."

So, my questions are these - and feel free to dip into your experience as an athlete and not just as a coach.

1. How receptive would you have been when you were 14-15 to being told that a sport that maybe wasn't your favorite might be your best shot to be good?

2. How much would team demographics (joining a team that is pretty thoroughly white) have affected a decision to change which sport was your priority?

Obviously, the correct answer is that both of these kids are individual personalities who are going to deal with the (assuredly gentle) push differently. I'm mostly just trying to throw it out there so I can get my brain around the entire issue.

At the moment, I think I'm competing against basketball for one sophomore and one freshman - which I'm pretty okay losing to. Basketball is fun and if it were more than a winter commitment (AAU teams, etc.) then I'd already have heard about it with both of these kids. I'll see them in the spring and they'll be in shape but with relatively fresh legs.

I've also got a junior and a senior that I'm trying to talk about of lacrosse. That one isn't fraught with the same racial dynamic, but it's also tougher (and a more common problem for me - Lacrosse is *the* prestige sport at our school) because it means if track loses then they'll be gone from outdoor track. But there's the additional risk that the extensive and specific training demands of the lacrosse program will keep them from running indoor even though it's not in-season for them.

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"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