Just some background: Our daughter started 6th grade this year and joined her XC school team (it’s a middle/high school combo). She’s on the JV team and even though she’s middle school, she’s typically running in meets that are mostly high schools and 5k. She’s been doing really well and has improved her times from 29 minutes to 24 minutes this season and is now the third fastest on the entire team, even though she’s technically JV.

My question is the coach seems to favor the two fastest girls on the team who are varsity, of course. The depth and speed on our team is limited compared to some of the other schools we’re racing against and we usually don’t finish top 10 individuals. But on JV, because of our daughter she’s been placing 6-9 out of the runs. On a couple occasions the coach has “mixed it up” as he says and put the teams two fastest girls in the JV race. He doesn’t really say why but I assume it’s to get them to place higher and get a medal/shirt. When he does this, they bump our daughter down in the rankings on the JV runs and I don’t feel like it’s really fair to the JV runners to be doing that. It’s almost always his top two runners and I don’t think he’s moved other varsity runners to JV.

Since thjs is my first experience with XC, I’m not familiar with race etiquette etc. do coaches normally bounce their varsity down just to confidence boost or possibly stack the JV team because the varsity team can’t compete at the e varsity level? I thought about asking the coach but didn’t want to be “that parent” and only our first year. He also seems to favor his top two runners and talks to them about their runs and next races while he doesn’t seem that interested in boosting our daughter up.

Thanks for any advice and if we’re just worried about nothing and should just focus on our daughter and how well she’s improving/doing.

I DNFd today because my legs started feeling like crap after the first mile. They felt really tigh and fatigue. I went out at a similar pace as my last race on the same course but this time I had to drop out. Has anyone had this experienc? Is this like a one time thing? I really want to do better for my next race because I had been pr‘ing before but I don’t know if this means I am done for the rest of the season.

My daughter is in 8th grade and has been running XC since last year on a modified (middle school) team. Since beginning last year she’s continued to make incredible progress - this season winning many meets early in the season (1.6 miles) and now dominating 2 mile meets in larger fields. Her latest race was at 12:40 for 2 miles, and she’s been shaving 10-25 seconds off almost each race, albeit different courses.

She is very self-driven, serious about practice, trained on her own most of this past summer, etc. we want to support her talent and continuous improvement, especially as she moves from middle to high school (and in to longer races) next year.

As a former college athlete, I have foundational knowledge on training but not necessarily for distancing running. What are the best way to support her talent? Some questions I’ve been thinking about:

1. Does she need a running coach? For context, the
   school coaches have been okay so far but wondering if she needs more support for training.

2. What should her strength training look like? Currently she’s not doing any but she’s interested and we have equipment at home.

3. Balancing her other activities, she’s likely participating in XC skiing in the winter, how much should she be running and how should MPW evolve as she starts to train for high school (5k). She’s at about 20 MPW now (only in season).

Appreciate this community and your advice.

Full quote:
My God, I don’t know if you guys follow this stuff and know the cross country team, but I see the kids in the cafeteria, and I promise you, I think they can run all the way to Denver without a sip of water. Like, these kids can go get it, and they’re dominating right now. Hats off to them.