Wantingmoree,
I'll offer my personal advice gained from decades ago when I was in the same situation -- hopefully this advice will be useful not just to you, but also any other high school athletes in similar positions who might be reading this.
(Note: it would help to know what year of high school you are currently in/finishing up, and what region of the country you're in. (i) I'll assume you're finishing up your junior year. (ii) I won't assume anything about your geographic location. (iii) I'll also assume that you are taking running pretty seriously. (iv) I will not give you similar advice to others here to just 'do school' and forget about running or do it as a club sport. (v) If you want to run seriously at the next level, then go for it. (vi) Be willing to 'eliminate' any college running program where you see 'red flags' of whatever type, and then keep looking for a program with a better fit).
1. On-Site Visit -- Critical that you visit the school for a weekend -- in-season -- and stay with a couple of the runners (if you can, do multiple visits). This is the best way to figure out 'culture', 'fit', 'inside information' and whether this could be a group of people you want to spend most of your waking (and sleeping) hours with for the next 4 years, and even potentially develop lifelong friendships with. (I found a great D1 running program fit for myself, and I still have amazing lifelong friendships with a 'group of 7' from 30 years ago. We're now at the point where some of our kids are now scholarship runners at D1 programs, even at the same university we attended/ran for).
2. Coaching Philosophy -- yes, you should talk with the coach about training philosophy, volume & mileage, rest & recovery, and how he/she thinks about 4-year development, not just a 'freshman jump.' The coach could be very strategic and long-term oriented, or just a bad coach with a sloppy approach to training. But you should try to find out this approach from both talking to the coach AND talking to the athletes/runners when the coach is NOT around.
3. Freshman Regression -- the on-site visit will also help you figure out this question/issue. (i) Partying -- maybe the team and/or school has a serious party culture, and the freshmen don't know how to handle their first year of true independence away from family and community -- binge drinking/getting hammered on the weekends, and not prioritizing consistent sleep, however often, can destroy otherwise promising running ability. (ii) Training Volume -- some programs just force freshmen to jump to big training volumes and high(er) mileage immediately, which can increase the risk of injury and/or actually over-train and make athletes slower, especially without a coaching philosophy that prioritizes rest & recovery. (iii) Poor Coaching -- and yes, some coaches are just not very good, and don't know what they're doing. Note: again, the on-site visit and talking with the current team members will help you figure this issue out, and it could be a combination of multiple issues.
4. Visit Multiple Programs -- my biggest issue during my search of long-ago was waiting too late to visit schools, and then locking in on a program I thought was the right/best fit. But I kept looking, paid attention to 'red flags', and eventually landed on a great fit
(maybe I just got lucky, in part) -- not a perfect fit, but much better than all the other programs I looked at and all the other schools I visited.
5. Big vs. Small / Elite vs. Best Fit -- Among others, I did an 'official visit' to Baylor, where I had received a (smaller) scholarship offer in the early 90s. I was a 400m/800m specialist in high school, and a 'decent' XC runner. At Baylor, I stayed with a 1:45 800m guy (who also ran a 45 split guy on their nat'l championship 4x400) and his roommate (who was a 29:30 10K guy, back when 29:30 was still a somewhat impressive time for 10K). Clyde Hart was the legendary head coach, and I got to meet Michael Johnson (who was already pro), and shake his hand and talk with him 1on1, then watch him do a track workout 6x200 and a weight-room session. I wasn't starstruck, but it was still pretty cool for a 17-year old kid. And I thereafter spent a lot of time thinking about how fast I could potentially run at a place like Baylor.
But the things I didn't really like were also important -- (i) Waco -- felt (to me) like a dust-and-tumbleweeds town (I'm from the surburban midwest, so could just be me), and the geography is flat-as-pancake (even moreso than the midwest). (ii) The Baylor campus -- at least to me in the early 90s -- did not seem 'very attractive'. The campus is urban with 'lots' of through traffic, and maybe I just had some idealized version of a more 'bucolic' college campus in my head that was different, but it didn't feel right. (iii) Team culture -- the 'team' felt a lot more like a collection of individuals running for themselves -- and didn't have the dynamic where I felt like this could be where I met lifelong friends. (iv) Coaching -- while Clyde Hart is/was a legend, the mid-distance coach who handled the 800 guys (and who would probably have started off being my primary coach) was not someone I felt comfortable with or gel'd with. This was later confirmed when he 'yelled' at me over the phone when I told him I was going somewhere else. So, I eventually decided to pass up maybe the 'opportunity of a lifetime' at that point, because the trade-offs out-weighed all the world-class advantages.
6. The Right Fit -- My choice ended up being Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, a mid-level D1 program with a decent history (since I almost never see individual university plugs on the LR message boards, I hope I'm not unitentionally violating any written or unwritten rules about plugging a specific school -- apologies, if so. I'm not recommending you go here, or even look at the school -- just explaining why I chose a much less 'elite' program than Baylor). (i) Birmingham -- not the greatest place ever at the time, but not dust and tumbleweeds Waco either -- although the Aug/Sept temps & humidity make for brutal XC training. (ii) The Samford Campus -- georgeous Georgian Colonial architecture, and a self-contained campus that felt more like 'college' to me. (iii) Team Culture -- a VERY strong sense of bonding, camaraderie and we're all in this together. Also, Samford is a dry campus, no alcohol on campus at all, and has a pretty religious student body, and 'southern' ideas about culture broadly. This can be experienced as quite 'repressive' depending on your worldview and what you want out of college. But I also met some very quality, high-caliber people who are still lifelong friends to this day. And the smaller student body at Samford made it much easier to form networks and groups because you were more likely to see the same people every day, as opposed to a campus with 20K to 50K students. Point being, it was a great place from which to focus heavily on running. (iv) Coaching -- this turned out to be a downside, in hindsight. The Head Coach Bill McClure had a very decorated, storied coaching career but was in his mid-70s when I arrived and was definitely past his prime as a coach (and therefore coaching at Samford, and not Abilene, South Carolina or LSU anymore). While I did get faster in college, it was probably not anywhere near as much as if I'd gone to a program like Baylor.
OK, so this post ended up much longer than I originally intended. Maybe I wrote it just as much (or even moreso) for me as for you. But with 30 years of hindsight, getting this decision right will have significant effects on how life turns out for you down the road. It doesn't mean there is only 1 right choice or 1 right school. But not choosing the wrong school is an important decision to try and avoid.
I wish you the best, and hope you find a program & school where you can develop (as a runner, as a human being) for the next 4 years and then spend a lifetime savoring the memories and the friendships. All the best in your search...
