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I'm curious to see how things shake out. In addition to the aforementioned freshman cut from basketball, I got some good news from a kid who is an excellent (for us) cross country runner but typically prepares for his lacrosse season in the winter. The best case scenario is that he just loves racing on the track and ditches lacrosse, but I'll settle for him sticking with his indoor commitment for as long as it lasts because he could get our 4x800m a lot closer to that Penn Qualifier during indoor.
I also finally got our head coach to concede that a former 200/400 sprinter wanted to move up to 800m this year. He's an impressive athlete, but I think he's getting close to maxed out physically in the shorter events. He's a quiet kid and extremely deferential to his coaches, but the first indication that he was thinking the same thing was when he quit football this summer and joined up with cross country. By the end of the season, he was running in varsity races for us and I think he has a chance to run in the 1:56-1:57 range this year.
Making sure that he runs with our 800m group will take some assertiveness on my part, though. Our sprint program had a kind of weird year this year and the people who run it want to emphasize the 400m more. This makes sense, tactically - as those runners are extremely useful for team points and it's just a weak event in our league right now. But I'm a bit worried that rather than build from the ground up, the sprint group wants to cull out some of my 800m runners and make them 400m runners. My objection to this is partly ego - I coach those kids year round. But it's also practical. The overwhelming direction that kids will have to move, event-wise, as they clarify their ability to compete beyond high school is up, up, up. 800m runners become milers. Milers become 5K runners. The athletic ones become steeplers. I think we're helping those kids more by taking 51 second 400m runners and trying to turn them into 1:54 800m runners.
So, I'm working hard to make a fence around my group without being a dick about it. Nobody's running 800 and up who doesn't run it, because that shit just doesn't work. But if they *want* to run those things, they're mine. ______________________________
"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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