Cutting on High School Cross-Country Teams

Recently, Running Times published an article by renowned coach Greg McMillan that got quite a bit of attention. This article seemed to be geared towards high school cross-country (and track) coaches, listing the different types of runners and how to best coach each personality. While it does play up stereotypes, the article still seems pretty spot on for the most part, and most high school runners fall into one of those categories. I think anyone who's run in high school (or college for that matter) can think of teammates who fit into each of the categories fairly well. Additionally, I think McMillan's methodology for handling each type of runner is very good (for the most part...read on for the actual controversy). However, the paragraph that's been getting the attention is about the runners that McMillan labels the "Necessary Evils," the talented runners who didn't put in the necessary work over the summer and come in out of shape. McMillan says to cut them.

Why School Sports are Important for Kids

I just found out that the district in which I competed in junior high school is eliminating all junior high school athletics championships for the 2011-2012 school year. I do not know how this will impact each individual school's athletic program, whether they will still continue to have a program that competes in dual meets and conference championships, or if the writing is on the wall for them too.

A Race to Remember

Since I obviously don't have any new race reports for you, I figured I'd post up some more older stories. In chronological order, my top three races:

2001 PIAA District II Cross-Country Championship - Scranton, PA
I started running freshman year of high school, but it wasn't until my junior year that I began to see real results. That year, I was running #2 for Bishop Hafey High School, behind #1 Kira. For me, Districts was the most important race of the season, since it determined who qualified for the PIAA State Championship. Kira had qualified for States as an individual in 2000 and had a good chance of going again in '01. For me, it would be more of a stretch. I had my goals though. For the first time, Districts was to be held on the Scranton Municipal Golf Course, a course that no runners had been allowed on earlier in the season, so no one had any idea what the course was going to look like. To further complicate things, Districts also fell on an unseasonably hot day, quite a change from the cool to cold conditions we had been practicing in and from the League meet a week earlier that had been in the  high 30's and rainy. No one in Northeastern Pennsylvania had run in these kind of conditions since the early season.

Flashback: Why I Started Running

Considering this is supposedly a running blog, I should probably post about running once in a while. Lately, it seems like all my posts have been about P90X or yoga or cycling. So I decided I'm going to go with something a little different today and recount the story of how I got started running.

I started running in ninth grade. Cross-country was offered in junior high, but I was too busy playing basketball. That, and as every high school basketball player knows, running is what your coach makes you do when you do something bad. However, in ninth grade, the high school basketball coach highly suggested we all run cross-country to get in shape. Keep in mind I was the kind of kid who spent hours and hours alone in her basement doing ball-handling drills. I was no stranger to doing whatever it took. (Some things never change?) So, along with several other freshmen basketball players, I joined the cross-country team.