PART OF THE CROWD
Convincing high school athletes to become part of the track and field crowd is getting tougher. Here, coaches provide new ideas on recruiting and retaining participants.
By Abigail Funk
Abigail Funk is an Assistant Editor at Coaching Management. She can be reached at: afunk@MomentumMedia.com
As each new season begins, coaches hope for rosters full of enthusiastic athletes. The perfect turnout would include familiar faces from the year before to lend experience and leadership, new blood to keep the program building toward the future, and of course, a wide range of talent and interest spread across events.
But when it comes to making that hope a reality, today’s high school track and field and cross country coaches face new challenges. For one thing, high schoolers have more options for how to spend their after-school time—more sports offered each season, more non-athletic clubs and activities, more opportunities to hold jobs, and more academic demands.
“When I was in high school, it was either football or cross country in the fall, basketball or wrestling in the winter, and baseball or track in the spring,” says Aaron Locke, Head Boys’ Track and Field Coach at Bridgman (Mich.) High School. “Now, tennis, golf, and countless other sports are offered in high school, not to mention club sports. I even have to compete for athletes in the spring now thanks to AAU basketball leagues.”
The rise of the single-sport athlete is another factor pulling students away from track and field. In years past, many athletes turned to track and field to keep in shape during their off-season. Now they find there is no off-season, as club participation turns many of them into year-round purists. For Locke, the competition is AAU basketball. For Grant Carboni, Head Track and Field and Cross Country Coach at McClatchy High School in Sacramento, Calif., it’s recreational league soccer. “A lot of my cross country girls play rec soccer,” he says. “It’s a non-competitive league where they get to hang out with their friends and kick a ball around. It’s hard for me to compete with that.”
At the same time, a lack of youth and recreation programs in track and field forces many coaches to recruit novices to the sport. But the individual nature of track and field can make it hard to sell new kids on the idea, since teens see being part of a cohesive group as a big reason to join a team.
For high school programs in many states, these factors are adding up to falling numbers. The good news, however, is that creative coaches around the country are finding ways to counteract the trend. By working to understand and attract a new generation of high school athletes, these mentors are ensuring that the sport remains strong. For this article, we’ve gathered their advice on drawing athletes to track and field and keeping them coming back for more.
Adjusting Your Approach
For many high school track coaches, attracting today’s athletes means examining their own coaching philosophy and becoming more flexible. They’ve learned that adjusting to kids’ hectic schedules and activity options requires letting go of a hard-line approach.
Carboni, for example, has found that to compete with low-key rec soccer leagues, it helps to loosen his expectations on practice attendance. “My athletes who play rec soccer don’t want to come out and practice every single day,” he says. “They think they can get by with one practice a week before the meet that weekend. I compromise by allowing them to attend soccer practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays as long as they’re at my practice on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
McClatchy is an inner-city school in Sacramento, and many students have after-school jobs or are expected to care for younger siblings until a parent’s workday ends at 5 p.m. Here, too, flexibility is essential to keeping athletes. “I split time with jobs,” Carboni says. “I do the same thing I do with rec soccer—I expect these athletes to be at practice two or three days a week instead of five. It’s a juggling act, but I wouldn’t have a team if I didn’t compromise.”
Locke attracts today’s time-crunched kids by promoting his practice workouts as quick and no-nonsense. “I tell these kids I’m not going to waste their time,” he says. “I have really tough practices, but they’re out of there in an hour. I’ll stick around and work on field events and hurdles with the athletes who want to stay, but I think the brief practice format has been a big motivator to get kids to come out for the team who were on the fence. After the fall and winter seasons, they want more of the social scene, and they may be a little sport weary as well, so I’ve found that a get-it-done mentality helps.”
For coaches with a strict, no-nonsense style, attracting and retaining high schoolers today may mean learning to coach in slightly different ways. This can be a difficult transition, but coaches who have made it say it’s possible to lighten things up without abandoning your work ethic.
“In my early years I’d call kids on the carpet and say, ‘Look, we’re here to work—you’re socializing and not participating, so you might as well leave,’” Carboni says. “But now I’m less strict. I’ve discovered that a more laid-back approach where some socializing is okay keeps kids around. There’s a fine line between loosening up and having the kids run the team, but we’ve managed to find a good balance.”
Peter Brewer, Head Track and Field Coach at Castro Valley (Calif.) High School, agrees that a light-hearted coaching style helps draw athletes. “I’ve learned to make sure that practice is a place my athletes want to be every day after school,” he says. “I think the coaches and athletes joking around and teasing and poking fun at each other is really important. Sometimes I feel like our coaching staff specializes more in standup comedy than cardiovascular improvement, but if it keeps kids excited about the sport, it’s okay with me.”
Making It Fun
Drawing athletes to your program means making track and field appealing. To keep practices enjoyable, savvy coaches focus on team building and mixing things up .
Team building is key because, despite the team scoring aspect of track and field and cross country, it can feel like an individual sport. And for adolescents, that can be a drawback. “Feeling like they’re a part of something is really important to high school athletes,” says Jodi Roberts, Assistant Track and Field Coach in charge of the pole vaulters at Escondido (Calif.) Union High School.
Carboni has found that nothing builds team bonds like a getaway, so twice a year he takes athletes to Lake Tahoe. “We do one camp in August and another one specifically for veterans in June,” he says. “It’s beautiful countryside with lots of trees and trail running. And who wouldn’t want to spend a week in Tahoe?”
Another strategy is to help athletes feel connected to others in their same event by scheduling special activities just for them. Roberts has found that holding team bonding activities helps her attract pole vaulters. “I make spaghetti and have all the vaulters over to my house to watch movies,” she says. “I’ve gotten together materials for them to make T-shirts and last year we ordered T-shirts that distinguished the pole vaulters from the rest of the team, and they loved that.”
Projects like fundraising events also build bonds between teammates. Carboni uses a track and field team Web site to keep players and parents updated on meet results and scheduling changes as well as details for the next fundraising activity. “We just did a fundraiser at a local wine tasting event where the kids sold raffle tickets, and they loved it,” Carboni says. “They had so much fun doing it together and feeling like a team.”
Fun practices are also selling points for young athletes, and provide a sense of belonging. In order to keep his practices fresh, Carboni takes the cross country team off campus for a change of scenery. There is a city park next to the high school offering a perfect setting, and runs across a nearby levy are a regular occurrence.
Brewer uses creative workouts to help keep practices fresh. “We’ve used pool workouts once a week and practices where we do relay races,” he says. “We schedule several of these special practices into the season so there is always something to look forward to around the corner.”
The last aspect of keeping things fun entails making sure your athletes experience some success, which requires careful scheduling. Carboni experienced first-hand the difficulties that come with maintaining enthusiasm for track when there’s little chance for team success.
Over the past decade, McClatchy High has competed in a couple of different leagues because of realignment. When it was moved to a league where it competed against much larger schools, participation dropped.
“With the realignment, we were dumped into a league with these one-high school suburban towns that had 100 kids on their track teams,” Carboni says. “We couldn’t compete with those numbers. But then we went back to our original league of inner-city schools, and now we’re all on a much more level playing field. Last year, I had 60 kids on the track team, the largest number we’ve had in my nine years here, and I think it’s a direct result of us being more successful than in years past.”
Branching Out
Another strategy for keeping numbers strong is to collaborate with other sport coaches and look to other sports for potential athletes. At Bridgman High, Locke lends a hand as an Assistant Football Coach. Being directly involved in another sport has helped him fill out his track and field roster when the spring season rolls around. During the fall he promotes running track as a great way for the football players to keep up their speed in the off-season.
“This is a small high school—about 380 students—and on average I have 25 to 30 boys come out for track each year,” he says. “I have my core track and field kids, but I’m able to fill every event because of those other athletes.
“I have great relationships with other coaches in the building, too,” Locke continues. “I’ll ask the baseball coach to send anybody that he’s going to cut my way. I’ve gotten a number of kids that way. If there’s a good relationship between the spring coaches instead of a rivalry for attracting each other’s athletes, that can play a really big part in increasing your numbers.”
Carboni takes a similar approach. “Our sprints coach is the head football coach and a physical education teacher,” he says. “The fact that he sees the athletes every day is invaluable. I’ve also been working with the soccer coach, who is going to have all his soccer players run track in the spring if they want to be considered for varsity soccer in the fall.”
Brewer goes to cuts for spring sports to try and entice the athletes who don’t make the baseball or softball teams. As a teacher on campus, he also has the ability to persuade new athletes daily to give track a try. “The worst a potential athlete can do is say ‘no,’” he says. “I put up bulletin announcements, posters, and do my best to get the football, wrestling, and basketball coaches to allow their athletes to run track.”
To recruit athletes for hard-to-fill events, consider looking in some unusual places. Roberts has found, for example, that gymnasts make great pole vaulters, and in fact, she made the transition herself in high school. A gymnast before entering high school, she switched to pole vault her freshman year and ended up vaulting in college at UC San Diego. She has converted several gymnasts into pole vaulters for Escondido.
“Gymnastics is perfect preparation for pole vaulting,” Roberts says. “For one thing, it’s just sprinting—no endurance necessary. And upper body strength is a great help. If you combine the speed and power of the vault and the upper body strength and coordination of the uneven bars, that’s essentially the skill set for pole vaulting.”
Roberts also has several wrestlers who have come out for pole vaulting. “Like gymnasts, wrestlers have a great awareness of their bodies,” she says. “They are also very strong to begin with.”
Focus On The Future
For some programs, increasing high school participation means getting kids interested in track and field and cross country before they hit ninth grade. Even though you may not see the fruits of your labors for a few years, helping out with feeder programs in your community will pay off later when those athletes come out for your team once they’re in high school.
Brewer had 150 athletes on his track and field teams last season, and it was the first year he saw freshmen with training experience at the high school level. He helps out as an assistant coach with the Castro Valley Track Club, a local running group for athletes in fourth through 12th grade started by a Castro Valley High alumnus about five years ago—which introduced those freshmen to track and field.
“I am glad to have incoming freshmen who are training veterans and don’t give me grief about workouts,” Brewer says. “I’m hoping the club’s influence is enough to keep newcomers trying out, and then as a coaching staff we can work our charismatic magic to get them to stay.”
The club is not seen as a separate entity in Castro Valley, but a complementary one. When alumnus Jim Philips formed the club he spoke with every running group in the town—elementary school, middle school, high school, and the two local parish youth groups—about his goals for the club. Philips aims to help support the public school track and field programs through the club by keeping athletes conditioned year-round, and working with the schools to increase their participation numbers.
One way the club does this is through Castro Valley High track athlete mentors, who help coach the younger participants in the club. “When a younger runner can pair up with a veteran high school runner, that is invaluable,” Brewer says. “The competitive learning curve goes way up, and the kid is mentally ready for competition at a much earlier age. Not only does the younger athlete learn from an older athlete already competing, but the high school athlete feels they are a part of the larger track world.”
Worth The Effort
Examining your coaching style, creating fun practices, lobbying potential athletes, helping out a middle school coach—it sounds like a lot of work. And it is, according to Roberts. But she believes it’s worth the effort. She’s found that her team bonding dinners and attracting gymnasts and wrestlers to pole vaulting over the last few years have given her more pole vaulters than she can keep occupied for an entire practice.
“I think next season I’m going to just split them up one day and have them at least try out another event,” she says. “But having too many of them is a much better problem than not having enough.”
Brewer, too, believes high school coaches who take on the extra work will be rewarded. “Promoting the sport by working with a club team is a huge investment of time and energy beyond the demands of being a high school coach,” he says. “But if more high school coaches take the initiative to promote the sport, we will see a strong upswing in team sizes and quality of performance, and that will be a huge positive for high school track and field.”
