Coaching Middle School XC

Coach Jason Saltmarsh takes on the job almost nobody plans for: getting handed a middle school team. Most coaches make one of two mistakes with it. They water down the varsity plan, or they treat it as supervised recess. Both cost you the same thing, which is the freshman class that walks in two years later. This episode covers what the job actually is, why minutes beat miles at this age, and how to deliver real training to athletes who will race anything you put in front of them. Why the number on the schedule should be minutes, not miles How to run a hard workout that a twelve-year-old cannot turn into a time trial The seventeen minutes of every practice that most coaches skip What USATF actually says about race distance, and the number to quote to a parent One loop, one clock, six doses: coaching grades five through twelve at once