1 in 1,000 New Hampshire residents is a middle-school cross-country runner
This is where it all starts, including a lot of the excellence trotting around American high schools lately
Yesterday, New Hampshire held its middle-school state cross-country championships. The Division 1 and Division 2 races took place at Londonderry High School, while the Division 3 and Division 4 races were staged at Coe-Brown Academy in Northwood. Both venues featured two-mile layouts.
In case you have never heard of a middle school, it’s the name of the place kids attend grades six through eight (at least around here) or grades five through eight (seen predominantly in low-census school districts). When I was a teenager, the corresponding institutions were called “junior high schools” and covered grades seven through nine. From what I can gather, this was typical across the U.S. in the 1980s and into the 1990s, and probably represented a persistence of the notion that “freshmen” were best kept away from the main high-school action—especially its eagerly gropey male arms.
Each divisional state championship also had a non-scoring race, so yesterday featured a total of sixteen races. You can watch videos of yesterday’s D-3 and D-4 action here; rather than praise the many praiseworthy standouts and their efforts, I’ll instead just praise the basic existence of the middle-school running scene and the people behind it.
A total of 1,352 kids (706 boys and 646 girls) from at least 65 schools finished one of these races:
In D1, there were 231 boy finishers (121 in the scoring race, 110 in the non-scoring race) and 224 girl finishers (110 scoring, 114 non-scoring) for a total of 455 finishers.
In D2, there were 150 boys (94 scoring, 56 non-scoring) and 130 girls (82 scoring, 48 non-scoring) for a total of 280 kids.
In D3, there were 151 boys (122 scoring, 29 non-scoring) and 138 girls (115 scoring, 23 non-scoring) for a total of 289.
In D4, there were 174 boys (117 scoring, 57 non-scoring) and 154 girls (102 scoring, 52 non-scoring) for a total of 328.
In the 1980s, when I started running at 14, all of these numbers were zero.
Yes, a lot of things are around now that weren’t around then, but most of them are the result of the implacable march of technology. There were no smartphones, GPS watches or “supershoes” in the 1980s, but people were certainly planning to have such things; all they lacked were the tools at the right scale.
In contrast, the technology to institute middle-school competitive running has been around for at least a hundred years, depending on how stringently one applies standards of timing and course measurement. The fact is, there was no one even trying to get youth running programs going when I was a kid. Soccer was the new athletic rage that would soon have all of America in its thrall (or not); if you didn’t play football or soccer in the fall in junior-high school, you didn’t play anything. If you were me, you played wiffleball in the back yard or basketball on some kid’s comically lopsided driveway while you waited for snow so you could use sleds and skis to traverse the landscape at dangerous speeds.
The population of New Hampshire is about 1.4 million. Divide 1,352 into 1.4 million, and you see that 1 in every 1,000 NH residents is a middle-school kid who runs cross-country. That somehow seems a more potent statistic than the number or even proportion of middle-school kids who are now officially running.
A total of 65 or so member schools implies, I would guess, a minimum of 200 or so coaches—one head coach for the boys, one for the girls and a floating assistant. Again, that’s a guess. But that is 200 people involved in getting kids interested in this kind of moving around— getting them used to the idea of competing honorably and fearlessly at a time when their minds are swirling with a zillion self-uncertainties, plus gobs of unavoidable hormone-charged snark and volatility. And that doesn’t account for the parents who lend their time and support in many ways, or the friends of these kids who show up to cheer them on.
It seems self-evident that among the reasons we’re seeing more fast kids than ever before, even controlling for population growth, is that more kids are taking up running well before high school. But perhaps less obvious on its face is how difficult it can be to help kids navigate this often ruthless three- to four-year period—to teach them to compete and pursue excellence while grounding them in the idea that this is something they can do forever without bundling an ounce of their human worth into the outcomes of their wholly optional foot-chases.
In most cases, every NCAA blue-chip distance recruit has had one or more capable high-school coaches along the way (though you might be amazed at the number of exceptions). But it’s uncommon to see observers properly crediting the middle-school coaches who helped these kids built the initial foundation under these kids’ feet—except for the kids themselves, who are quick to cite these mentors if you listen to them. This isn’t to say that every one of these coaches knows what they’re doing or puts in a phenomenal effort, but anyone who is willing to even be around two dozen 10- to 13-year-old kids for ten-plus hours a week deserves a medal, or at least a prime-time nomination for one.