<p>Are DI college track teams close? Have any of you guys run in college or have kids that run in college and can answer this for me? Do they hang out outside of practice and meets? Do kids from different grades hang out? Do athletes from different events hang out (i.e. jumpers and sprinters, distance and throwers etc)?</p>
<p>For some background… currently I play volleyball and track. My volleyball team is very close, and I think that I will miss that closeness when I do track in college. I prefer volleyball but Ivy Leagues and other great schools have showed interest in me for track. I’m considering going to a lesser school for volleyball or possibly doing both in college.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman thrower at a small D1 school in the Patriot League. From what he tells me, they are all close. His main friends are all on the team. He is spends quite a bit of time with the upperclassman. I’m not sure if all schools are like this. During his OV, this team was much warmer and more welcoming then the other schools he visited.</p>
<p>My daughter’s team seems pretty close. She’s a sophomore now, and hangs out with the kids in her year and also with freshmen and juniors. I don’t think she spends much time with the seniors, though, but they all get along well and the upperclassmen are nice to the younger girls. While she mostly hangs out with the girls in her event group because they see each other the most due to practicing together, I know she has friends from the other events too. </p>
<p>However, not all teams are like this. A good friend of D’s from high school just quit her college track team because the environment wasn’t what she thought it would be. She really wasn’t friends with anyone from her team like she was in high school, and missed that. When D went on her official visits, there was one team that she thought was too insular–the track kids seemed to only know other track kids. For D, that was too much on the other extreme.</p>
<p>D’s track team (Ivy) seems to really enjoy each others company. You’ll spend a lot of time with the people in your event group so that will most likely be the first bunch of people with whom you get pretty tight. Once it came time to choose housing mates, D’s suite is a mix of track and non-track girls - so it’s not the all-consuming social focus.</p>
<p>…but the nature of T&F make the training and competition more fragmented than volleyball. As I recall you’re a thrower and they do tend to do their thing away from the rest of the team. While you will likely make some good friends in different events, I can understand that you might not have that exhilarating team effort feeling that you enjoy in vball</p>
<p>S’s Ivy team is very close and most choose to live together in a couple of different locations after freshman year. However, I think you’d really have to assess this on a team by team basis - I don’t think you can assume that the teams for one sport will be more or less close than another, but rather it will probably depend on the chemistry among teammates on any particular team, regardless of sport. Best of luck with your recruiting and decision making process :)</p>
<p>edited to add: I think Varska makes a good point about track athletes spending much of their training time with people in similar events. In S’s case, the distance runners are a close group and the sprinters are another close group - I don’t know as much about the jumpers and throwers</p>
<p>My kids are both D1 athletes, but not in track. For both of them, their teams are close and offered an instant support network when they arrived as freshmen. I’m sure this is true in all sports.</p>