My son is a sophomore who wants to run XC and track at the college level and currently has PRs (with the championship season still to come): 800 1:59, 1600 4:27, 3200 9:26, XC 5K 16:01. I suspect based on his times that we are mostly looking at high end D3 schools. We are planning a summer college visit loop (mainly because his fall breaks are tough because of his XC training schedule and spring break is difficult because his break and mine don’t line up). He is taking the SAT in June (current PSAT is 1370, 4.63 GPA). This is more a quick pass through some schools to try to get him to narrow the kinds of schools he is looking for, but would it be helpful at this point to try to meet with coaches on some of these given that he will only be a junior in the fall? Does it make sense to wait for his SAT scores (how long will that take?) and for the July 1 deadline to pass (his summer is super short because his school starts back at the end of July!)?
Use https://tfrrs.org/ to help identify schools where he may be competitive, also look on school websites. If it’s possible he could run D1 you might look at ‘lighter’ D1 schools, like Patriot league…there’s plenty of overlap in talent/times between the top D3s and some D1 schools. Note D1 schools have a recruiting calendar where coaches can’t meet with students on campus until Aug 1 prior to junior year. https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/compliance/recruiting/calendar/2024-25/2024-25D1Rec_XTFRRecruitingCalendar.pdf
You can see if any of the D3 coaches have time to meet when you visit. Send introductory emails to coaches (head coach/event coach/recruiting coach) with academic and athletic stats. Create a catchy email subject line e.g., Class of 2031, 4.63 GPA, and best events/times. Fill out the recruiting questionnaires if the coach directs you to (prioritize emails over recruiting questionnaires.)
June SAT scores should be available June 20.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to get on him about working on drafting a template email. I think it does make sense to wait until the season is over, plus a couple of his buddies are working to try to qualify (so close!) for New Balance Nationals in the DMR and 4x800m.
My older kid followed the advice here on CC about sending an email with the specific info in the subject line, and got responses from D3 coaches. Better to start sooner rather than waiting for scores, IMO, because they can always ask for that stuff, and it sounds like you have to balance some timing/travel considerations. Good luck!
Those are solid times for a sophomore. I think most D3 coaches would be pretty excited to get an email from a potential recruit with those marks and grades.
However…there is a pretty good chance that by next summer he’ll develop into a runner that would fit well in a lot of D1 programs. A runner with 1:59 speed who is already running a 9:26 has a very good shot to be a 9:10-9:15 3200er in a year. That’s typically a range that’ll get some Ivy recruiting interest as well as various other solid D1 programs.
So I wouldn’t necessarily put a ceiling on where he could run at this point (except that the very top tier distance programs might be less likely at this point, as they are for most everyone).
Sorry if that complicates things rather than clarifying. I still think a tour is a great idea and yes, getting a sense of D3 colleges and how the programs work could really help him even if in a year his preferences lie elsewhere. But if you’re going to end up near a larger school where a tour would be easy to fit in, I wouldn’t necessarily exclude it for running reasons.
You’ll have next summer also to help refine the list, and by that time he likely will have been talking to all the coaches by phone.
I don’t see the harm in contacting coaches before you visit. Just a brief email with a subject line like: ‘27; 1:59, 4:27, 9:26; 4.63 GPA. Then repeat the PRs in the body of the email, include weighted and unweighted GPA, and indicate that you’re visiting the campus this summer and would love to chat or meet to learn more about the Track program. Link to athletic.net or milesplit profile. Include cell number for calls/texts!
Some coaches won’t be around, some might wait until next year to get serious, etc. Don’t take any of it personally. Your goal at this point isn’t really to decide on a school, but to get your son experience talking to coaches and having some things to think about over the next year as he’s considering what he wants his college experience to be like.
Enjoy the rest of the season and good luck!
ETA: I meant to include this but didn’t: if there’s any interest in Ivies, I’d go ahead and email those coaches too after the dust settles on the season. They vary in timelines so no harm to get on the radar of those who are starting to look ahead. Don’t be put off if the emails are ignored.
Thank you! This all sounds like great advice. I’d be really interested to hear from parents/students going through the D1 track recruiting process now (and especially next year) as schools process the fall-out from the NCAA changes and roster-caps/portal recruiting. After seeing what getting cut from a DI program did (academically and psychologically) to one of my advisees (who is now a top notch DIII athlete and is in talks with his new grad program to run DI again for his 5th year). He eventually found a welcoming DIII home after the fall, but I have to admit I am leery.
The D1 landscape is indeed difficult to predict, especially on the men’s side. P4 schools will be very competitive for recruiting and the SEC in particular has tighter roster limits than what the settlement calls for. The Ivy League, in contrast, will not be opting in to revenue sharing, so no roster limits there.
To further complicate things, the transfer portal seems particularly active and there also seems to be a lot more international athletes being signed. Not great news for high schoolers looking to be recruited.
We emailed the coach at every school we visited and most were happy to meet with us briefly and show us around the facilities.
This matches the timeline we had. We did a big summer tour through New England between 10th and 11th grade and got casual meets/basic tours from most of the coaches we reached out to. As Junior year progressed, some teams were added, some were removed. I’d give it shot and maybe also see both some smaller D3 types and bigger D1 types in whatever region you’re going to so that your son can start to figure out what he likes. None of these kids are likely going to be professional athletes after college, so acadmic/college fit should come first, hopefully also with a team they love joining.
Curious what people think is a good amount of time/number of schools for this kind of thing? I am thinking a week is probably the max, both in terms of time away from summer XC training as well as 16-yo patience and attention span! Right now we are probably looking at an Ohio/PA loop so places are not super close together, and there might be a break to visit family in the middle.
It just depends on the kid. Touring schools is tiring, so it’s hard to do two in one day, or one every day for a week. I would make sure to get a couple of traditional LACs in the 2K student range, but would throw in some larger schools up to 8K, so he can get a sense for what type of experience he ideally would want. Ultimately for recruiting he will have to cast a wide net.
If there is any uncertainty about running in college, it’s also not uncommon that potential recruits have schools on their list where they wouldn’t play their sport. So…if there’s a large university along the route, don’t hesitate to stop. He wouldn’t be the first athlete who sees IU or Michigan or [insert large school] and says I’m done with my sport and want a large school. There’s always the club option at larger schools too.
Yes, we were definitely planning visiting some bigger schools (Case Western?, Carnegie Mellon?, Penn State?) as well for sure and some in urban vs. suburban vs. rural environments. Given that his high school graduating class size is around 900, I’m not sure what he will think of transitioning to a small school environment! Athletic and academic fit will both be important though!
I wouldn’t automatically eliminate smaller schools. My D24 graduated HS with 900 kids in her class and is thriving at a college with 1,900 students.
I had 1000 in my graduating class and I preferred big schools (for lots of reasons).
My kids attended one small (1000 in the whole school) hs, then a larger one, then a medium one. They both thought they wanted small schools for college, Both thought that was great at the beginning but wished for more class options by the end. The STEM student (about 3800 students on campus) and only ‘ran out’ of classes as a senior but would have liked more social options. The one history major at the 10,000 student school couldn’t have cared less about the STEM side of campus (or education, or nursing) and wished the history and English departments were bigger.
The best approach probably varies a lot by student and family. Our approach at that stage was quality visits over quantity of visits. So, definitely not more than 1 per day, and we tried hard to: 1. Run where the team runs, 2. Hang out in town where students hang out, including lunch and/or dinner, time sitting in coffee shop, time in book store, 3. Typically staying the night nearby. That worked for us in getting the sorts of impressions that formed preferences and questions going forward.
We didn’t really do a “long” college trip at that stage. It was more a few visits folded into a family vacation, a few over a long weekend, a few day trips during the school year to get a sense of local college life when school was in session (the latter were not colleges that we expected to be on the final list, but we used them as examples of types of schools).
We went through this when official visits couldn’t happen until senior year. So we sort of “back planned” to make sure the visits in fall of senior year were used well. That involved a longer trip in summer of junior year to narrow the # of visits. These were schools where we knew there was recruiting interest.
On the training: he should be able to adapt the training to the travel plans and vice versa. If you know there are 2 hard workouts and a long run each week, just plan to be someplace on tues/fri/Sunday (for example) that’ll allow for that and allow some time for easier runs on the other days. Summer training is usually pretty easy to adapt.
I totally agree. I am both product of a SLAC (and a professor at one!)–you definitely don’t have to convince ME of the benefits. 
We have planned and/or are planning a few of those kinds of tack-on type trips that you mention @politeperson --we folded one informal visit into our winter break vacation (it was around New Year’s so no one really around) and are planning a trip to Colorado this summer where we’ll do a visit to Div 2 Colorado School of Mines before heading into the mountains. His group of teammates really wants to qualify for NB Nationals (but are still a bit short). If he qualifies for that we’ll try tacking on a Philly area school to that trip. He has definitely been able to train on the road before (he is really good at finding random tracks to do the workouts). I think the bigger issue for him with traveling and training during fall break is his desire to be there with the team because those are the weeks of Sectionals and Regionals so super high pressure weeks for the team culture of XC.
My S19 ran track at a D3 school (Denison, so maybe on your Ohio list?). He wanted to run but did not want to focus on getting recruited, so a bit different from your son, but we did try to meet with the coaches at every school we visited, and it was extremely helpful. We did an initial round during his junior year, to ferret out things at the big school/small school level, and then we did an admitted schools round the following year. He wrote to the coaches in advance to ask for a meeting, and in almost every case, the coaches were happy to make themselves available and spend time talking with him and showing him around. Among other things, he was able to ask questions about what his typical day would be like if he were on the team. I would think that something like that would be helpful to your son in deciding whether he wants to pursue D1 or whether a strong D3 team would be sufficiently challenging. The other thing was that the coaches see their schools from a different perspective than the admissions folks and not only as to sports, so talking with them can give you a better sense of the school overall (in most cases, we parents were invited to sit in on the meetings, although we let our son run the show). When we visited Denison, the coach introduced my son to some of the team members and invited him to practice, and it was really that experience that convinced him he would be happy there. I’m sure the experience would be different if your son is a recruiting candidate, but I guess my point is that, even absent that piece, meeting the coaches is a great idea. To me, the idea of doing a round before recruiting kicks in in an intense way seems attractive.
If the HW is done properly and the fit is right a 1900 student LAC can feel a lot bigger than a large school where you have to work really hard to find the pockets of kids like you.
Remember that running at altitude is different. If he works out at altitude on his first day here, he might feel defeated (also a little dizzy).
Altitude is great for building endurance, but it takes a while. My sister trained for a marathon in Denver and when she ran it at sea level she said ‘Piece of cake.’ My daughter went to college in Florida but spent summers in Denver and when she returned to sea level, her coach was very impressed with her running times (plus she actually did the summer training packet, while many of her teammates didn’t).
School of Mines really supports its athletes too. My nephew plays on the club hockey team and this year they went to the national tournament (which is a crazy combination of club teams, community college teams, and other levels of play). Since the school is mostly engineers, the athletes are mostly engineers so practices and games are planned around academics.