With times listed, what are my chances of competing past high school?

Question

I just completed my sophomore season for track in high school. Here are my PRs:

1600m: 4:51

32000m: 10:50

My times dramatically decreased from the beginning of this years season...I'm pretty sure I can break 4:30 by my senior year.

Obviously, I'm not Division I, but what are the chances of making Division III, or maybe even Division II. Thanks for the help, and be honest!

Answer 1

well if you wanna be competitive for D1 you might wanna look to run a 4:20 or lower and a low 9 min 3200

Answer 2

Thirty-two kilometers in 10:50?  Slow down or the cops will give you a huge speeding ticket...:)

OK it's a typo, but anyway...

I wish I had the kind of times that you do right now!  I would say, keep going hard for the next two years.  Take a short break (a week or two) after the end of track season but kick back into gear during summer.  You'll want to do more long, slow runs to get back in a cross country kind of shape.

If you can get your 3200 down to anything significantly under 10min. by your senior year you should be approaching competitive ranks.  Your mile times will have to be down around 4:20, though.  And you will be expected to make further improvements from these times during college if you want to stay in the race...

Answer 3

...

Worthwhile question!

I ran D-II before it split into D-II and D-III.  "Back then" as now, a reasonably good runner could run a 5:00 or 5:05 pace for 5 miles or 10K.  So your basic mile speed is fast enough, though I am sure you will bring it down in the next few years.  The trick is sustaining that speed over distances longer than what you are used to.  And what's even trickier is - for many runners, it's only when they get one or two years of college running under their belts do they really find out if they can do this.

D-III schools do not provide scholarships for any sport.   There are a few D-III schools where it's tough to make it onto the top seven - Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is the reigning D-III XC dynasty, and before that it was North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.  In some years, both squads have been so competitive that you had to be individual All-American caliber to make the team.

Many, many, many D-III schools will welcome you with open arms if you have any running background at all.  If running is your major concern in college, you have to weigh the benefits of getting the best coaching and maybe not making the squad vs. getting less than excellent coaching and making the squad.

D-II, you do have to talk about running a 5 minute mile pace for 10K.  Half to full athletic scholarships are available for D-II schools, so making these teams are a bit more competitive.

For more information on how you stack up against the future competition, spend some time online googling the NCAA XC finals for all three divisions across the years.  What's really good is that on many results pages you will see not only where the team members placed, but their times as well.

Likely if you can maintain a 5:30 pace for 5 miles, you can make the squad at most NCAA D-III schools.  Of course, at these schools, you can't expect to get an athletic scholarship, which means something in these days of out of this world college costs.

There are other national conferences to consider as well, NAIA and NCCC among them, that colleges participate in, but like D-III you can't expect an athletic scholarship from

Regards,

Phil

Answer 4

i think pretty good if you could get your times down some you would be pretty compewtitve in a 5000m race in a few years from now it looks like you could run a 16 or so right now