It can be in any college division. Not talking about individuals, just team qualifiers.
If you took a team that had never been to nationals to nationals, how did you do it? How did you shift the mindsets and trajectory of the program? Was it the kid's mentality more than anything? What was the difference between a team getting 10th in the region to getting top 5?
This post was edited by rojo 1 day after it was posted.
NAU has consistently shown that you don't need "Kenyans", they have shown they can import talent from New Zealand, Australia, Guatemala, other parts of Africa, etc.
It can be in an college division. Not talking about individuals, just team qualifiers.
If you took a team that had never been to nationals to nationals, how did you do it? How did you shift the mindsets and trajectory of the program? Was it the kid's mentality more than anything? What was the difference between a team getting 10th in the region to getting top 5?
Duh, they got more talent. Nobody is turning water in to wine.
Not to knock the NYU coach who's doing a great job, but we both know NYU was only obscure for a period. National Champions in 2007 and a were sending good teams as recent as 2012-2013.
They also have a student body of 40k and have a great reputation academically. Easy math for a D3.
It's not easy and can take some time, also depends on the level. At a D1 level, going from low funding to high funding can change things quickly, particularly if it is a good school. At a D3 level, the key is to have a school that is highly desirable at least in a small demographic. This could be a religious school or just a top tier liberal arts school. Basically, something besides running that people would want to be at the school for. Next step, building a strong culture on the team. This means good attitudes and building trust with the athletes that the program you have them on will make them faster. Supplement that by trying to bring in faster athletes, but focus on bringing in a core that either at the current talent level or better that is willing and enthusiastic about putting in the work. Not just athletes that liked running in high school and were sort of good, but athletes that are eager to work hard even though they might not be the most talented. Patience is also key, recruiting can be finicky year to year.
If you're actually coaching and looking for some people to talk to. The coach at Johns Hopkins took a regional also ran to a national level.
Not to knock the NYU coach who's doing a great job, but we both know NYU was only obscure for a period. National Champions in 2007 and a were sending good teams as recent as 2012-2013.
They also have a student body of 40k and have a great reputation academically. Easy math for a D3.
Fewer than 30k students and not the best area for distance runners.
i was a D3 starter on soccer and on the track team, and my general impression would be you are missing the boat by tossing out "individual success." fair or unfair, the game is to either have a big name and previous history of success i can point to -- the NYU thing -- or even some limited degree of "current success." you then can recruit the next year saying "we got a kid to nationals." maybe that gets you 2 more that level. "we got 3 kids to nationals." success begets success.
success also avoids attrition. if you sell success then don't deliver it, you get attrition. people become normal students. people leave to chase the success you promised. a new coach has a short window to deliver.
my college soccer coach was a good recruiter but a jerk. the core of our team was as good as any D3 we played. the problem was the attrition. every year it was like some fraction of the core and basically back to scratch. as such we stayed mediocre as a unit and didn't accumulate quality and achieve success.
track to me is an even more rough version of this. fast people know they are fast and in demand. soccer there is some subjective grey area where kids can under- or over-estimate their value. everyone knows that guy with x time is the jackpot. but is he running in college, and can you get him instead of the next. and can you keep him around and accumulate similar folks. if you're a jerk or the team sucks, who knows.
last, i think some d3 track coaches are "rolling out the ball" and simply unaware of what is competitive fodder at the level. i thought my coach championed very few of his athletes who also played basketball for him, who had near-nationals level quality. i thought he overlooked several of us who should have been more competitive in conference. i thought it was because he was a basketball coach from D1 playing settings who was dismissive of most of his team's talent relative to D3. you need a coach who understands what a good time or distance is in D3. and who broadly nurtures his athletes. i only later realized based on HS times and looking on the internet how conference meets went that i should have been competing for conference. but we were doing confidence destroying D1 meets and the coach didn't seem to grasp who his point scorers would be and the value of broader encouragement. now D1 you need elite guys to do much of anything. that's different
last last, it was also my general impression my school did a poor job of promoting the team within the athletic department and fully harvesting all potential contributors. they didn't really ask soccer to come out, i was just eager and knew through the XC friend grapevine when practice was starting. make friends with the other coaches, scout the other teams. there should be plenty of runners and jumpers in basketball, and not just the guy who jumped 24' in HS. there should be plenty of runners in soccer. there should be strong throwers or fast runners on football. some teams i don't think are even fully tapping their XC for TF. there may be fast people not playing varsity sports. are you even gathering the best team of your college or just gathering low hanging fruit. i mean though i had run junior high track well, i was going to play HS soccer. the PE coach noticed me and my friend's presidential fitness test times in PE. we were referred to the track coach and invited to the track period in the fall. we both ran all 4 years, and i was above average and ran D3, and my buddy won conference and went to regionals, ended up D1 potential if he'd pursued it. that's scouting your own students beyond those who readily show up to practice. one danger of "rolling out the ball" for obvious elites is thinking it's beneath you to do such barrel-scrapeing. but if you are team minded you realize every point helps.
also, have the right mix of meets. my school when i was there did basically D1 meets with a D3 team and it was demoralizing and resulted in attrition at the edges. level-appropriate meets are important to retention and motivation. i think TFRRS helps with this but you need a sense of what a competitive time is for your level and how close you are to it. if you run division-appropriate meets most of the time, the runners get it implicitly. if you run a bunch of D1 meets a tiny handful get their thrill and the rest are like why am i here. i'd get destroyed in some D1 800m then run with the pack D3. am i in the right event or the wrong one. different meet is different answer. i'd beat a handful of D1 sprinters then win a D3 conference heat. it made it hard to pace or get a feel how you were doing. a challenging, "i got to run a D1 meet" or two like that suffices to get one needs to push oneself. a lot of losing against scholarship athletes isn't helpful.
adding on what i just said, HS kids can now see your meet results on TFRRS or your own website. if you are making an ambitious schedule and getting trounced in the course of trying to foster your supposed great program, that's what your recruits will see, is, to be harsh, a losing team. my college soccer coach had a non-conference schedule stacked with ranked teams while trying to rebuild the program. the results were mediocre and i thought it hurt morale for conference play and recruiting. at least some of the time put your team in situations where they can churn out some wins so the team knows they don't suck, and the recruits can be pointed to something.
The story I’m going to tell is true. Early 2000’s, I was on a xc team that was consistently in the bottom 2-3 teams in their conference. I got beat by a girl my sophomore year in the 1500. This is despite finishing top 5 in state 1600 in hs. We were a joke D2 team (which is saying something!). I met a local hot shot elite runner during a track session who offered to coach me. I trained correctly thru the summer, redshirted cross, made nationals and broke the school record in the 1500 that spring. I never ran slower than 6:30 pace for distance days and added lots of uphill running and circuit training, was 100% committed. Honestly at the time I totally hated it! By that point the guys were like ‘if he can make YOU fast, then we want in!’ We slowly improved over the next 3-4 years, with both home grown and out of state talent. The team is one of the best in the country now, and has been for years and will stay that way. Summary: YOU must move the needle first, otherwise it’s just talk.
put differently save the "strength of schedule" premised schedule or ambitions for the team that is approaching that level and benefits from the challenge. maybe send a great athlete on their own to some invitational. IMO running your newly rebuilding team through a meat grinder to sell how serious you are is probably delivering the opposite message in practice. that you aren't very good. that you'd be better off on the other team.
Not ever talked about, but Oregon State Women has seen a huge turnaround. Quintana's 1st year in program was 2017, they were 13th in the West Region. In 2018, they made the NCAA's out of the difficult West Region. They have made the NCAA's 3 times now - Oregon State had never qualified a team or individual to the NCAA Meet ever. Never even had a top 25 individual at the Region Meet. They were obscurity to NCAA quicker than any team that I can remember. Doing it mostly with Northwest/Oregon kids as well. A few Canadians too - but, impressive flip of a team. It's hard to do in Cross Country - especially out of a difficult region where you have some longstanding elite Women's Distance Teams. Just my two cents
re believing in yourself, sounds cute, but you give your athletes a different impression of whether they can do so if, say, 1:46 wins the heat (my very first impression of college track as a D3), or 1:50-low does, or even 1:55. or 10.2 vs. 10.5 vs. 11. morale is important to training intensity and retention. part of believing you belong there and shouldn't quit is being competitive "enough." people getting whooped doesn't encourage them to stay and work hard. i started doubting my event choices. if you then find out your time is actually competitive in your conference context, it's like why did i just go through that schedule? because at conference to max points and win the meet you want me fighting for every timing 10th and scoring point and leaning at the line and doing all the small things right and believing in myself. to do so you need to have been in races before then where the little things mattered and you had a chance. proper calibration of the schedule helps. if it's too easy, increase it next year.