<p>a question to all you athletes/friends of athletes out there: how good do you have to be in a sport to be recruited ( im class of 07). I know that alotta ppl are really amazing but track teams are pretty large and i know ivy schools (womens sports esp) have trouble hanging on to their athletes. Would a coach be interested in a committed runner who, although not a state champ, has performed well at the regional level and made it to states, with minimal coaching? i do a bunch of events, pretty versatile.</p>
<p>Well being recruited is one of the main ways that Yale knows of your skills but I guess if you make if evident that you wish to continue running and you did do well in states, then it could help.</p>
<p>you definitely have a good chance at being recruited for track...yea, i would say to express your interest in running to colleges. good luck!</p>
<p>Contact the Coach and express your interest. You definitely have nothing to lose, and potentially everything to gain. I tried the same thing, and while I'm sure it didn't actually help me since I'm not that good and didn't get on the coach's list that he sends to the admissions office, you could at minimum get an official visit out of it, and that way you'd get an idea of what being on the team is like, and what the guys (or girls) on the team are like. And you'll want to talk to the coach eventually anyway for a summer workout schedule, and so he knows to expect you. Ivy coaches have a terribly tough time hanging onto recruits because they can't offer athletic scholarships... Yale's top XC recruit this year had his heart set on Yale since 9th grade, and then a week before the Letter of Intent deadline, Stanford offered him a 5-year full ride. Guess where he's going next year. So yeah, contact the coach and see what happens.</p>
<p>What are your PRs?</p>
<p>Ivy League track can be pretty competitive at the top end. E.g. recent Yale grad Kate O'Neil competed for the US the 10K in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.</p>
<p>You must be quite fast! Good luck getting recruited. Start researching soon. I have 2 friends who've signed letters of intent to play sports at Brown and Yale, and the deadline for those comes up FAST.</p>
<p>I met Frank Shorter in Guam about 3 weeks ago. I was there for a x-country meet and he was there to run a half-marathon the day after our race. He started the girls' race and spoke to all the runners. It was pretty awesome :) I'm sure you know who Frank Shorter is, but for all the non-runners.... he was the 1972 Olympic champion in the marathon, and he attended Yale. He was also Steve Prefontaine's running buddy (Pre is considered by many to have been the greatest American distance runner ever).</p>
<p>how do i fit in? i ran a marathon, but i did it just to finish and didnt run very fast. im probobly gonna run another. i doubt im athletic enough to be a rec athlete. does harvard even have a marathon running team? do marathon running teams even exist? i run just for fun and i dont really have any time goals, but i guess i can run one in 4hrs 30 min if i practice. i doubt that is fast enough for any school. still, there aren't very many high school marathon runners. i dont run cross country (i run really long distance and the x country running schedule interfered with my marathon running schedule-chicago marathon was in october and i needed to train for that) i doubt im a rec athlete, im just wondering what the adcoms will think of me. will they think im a good commited athlete, or a kid who has a cool ec? im writing my essay about it (im a junior btw) also, how many high school marathon runners are there? i though i was unique, (20 16 yr old runners at chicago this year) but according to the people at this site, many high schoolers do it. as runners, what do you think? oh yeah im in track, and im a high jumper-totally unrelated to long distance running. also the only other sport i do is tae kwon do, im a black belt, but tkd is more of an activity then its a sport right? i majorly kick butt and i could get someone to say im a good sparer (i am) if it would help.</p>
<p>Shark_bite, thats incredible. I doubt if there are marathon 'teams', but having that for an Ec DEFINITELY says a lot about you. tenacity, dedication,etc. good luck.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>he was the 1972 Olympic champion in the marathon, and he attended Yale.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Frank Shorter was also the silver medalist four years later in the Olympic Games of Montreal, running a faster time than he did in '72 and losing only to the steroid-soaked East German, Waldemar Cierpinski. </p>
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<blockquote> <p>(Pre is considered by many to have been the greatest American distance runner ever).<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Hardly. Pre is considered by many to be the most over-rated American distance runner. It's true he was intense, colorful, and driven, but he broke no world records and never won an Olympic medal of any color nor any major international championships. There are other American runners who have achieved all of these feats.</p>
<p>Pre was a good national-class runner. He won a lot of college championships and held a bunch of US records. Like many attractive public figures who died young, he is lionized far beyond his actual achievements. Others who are similarly over-rated for having died young: James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Jim Croce, and John Kennedy (both of them).</p>
<p>Coureur, your knowledge of running and runners likely surpasses mine (especially looking at your username!), so thanks for adding your points. Whether Pre was overrated or not, I admire him very much because he was intense and gusty and ran not only to win, but to win giving everything he had, every time. His story reminds me of why I run. I'm not fast at all but I love to run (I'm really a swimmer :)) It's so sad he died just before the '76 Olympics. I wish he'd had the chance to test himself against the best in the world one more time. This is purely speculation, but I think getting "boxed-in" for the first 2 miles of the 5000 in Munich prevented him from winning a medal. He ran his last mile in 4:04.</p>
<p>Coureur, what distances do you run? Do you plan to run in college?</p>
<p>pre is idolized because he was everything that a runner should be. plain and simple.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Whether Pre was overrated or not, I admire him very much because he was intense and gusty and ran not only to win, but to win giving everything he had, every time. <<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>^
This I can agree with. </p>
<p>As for my distances, I'm a parent - I'm just a fitness runner these days with the occasional 5K or 10K road race. I'm old enough that I had the good fortune of once seeing Pre run in person (he lost but it was a great race).</p>
<p>Back in '76 I was looking forward to seeing Pre in Olympics too, but I have to admit that if he had lived and run, Lasse Viren would have whipped him all over again just like he did in '72. Viren calmly went out and beat some major racing animals for those two more gold medals in '76. I'm afraid Pre would have been just one more of the many victims that littered the track at Montreal. For Viren it was just another day at the office.</p>