XC recruiting in junior year - my experiences

mellorunner
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 14:30:41 +0000

TheGFG makes some excellent points, especially regarding discrepencies between course lengths and conditions. The best thing for recruiting in XC is to place well in championship meets. Head to head competition (making All-State, All-Region, whatever) is the only “solid” marker for XC, because it isn’t at all dependent on course conditions. Then in track focus on putting up strong times (as well as strong competitive performances). I’d say you might be good to contact the coach again after November, assuming your athlete performs better in post season competition than they had before.

Of course, it’s also important to make sure you’re contacting teams that are a realistic fit for your athlete. For example, your son could place tenth in your state meet…chances are, Dave Smith at OSU isn’t going to get too excited about that, nor would Wetmore out at Colorado. They get dozens of those emails a day. Meanwhile the coach at State U or Random Private College are likely to be far more responsive. A good way to look at this is check the teams rosters. What sorts of performances were the athletes running in high school? If it’s a team full of NXN and Footlocker qualifiers and your son is struggling to make the state meet, that’s a red flag. But then again, your son might have a really strong 800m time, and could be recruited with a more track focus instead of a XC focus.