Your athlete just ran a PR. They want to run in college. You have no idea what their options are.
What if you could see exactly where your athlete stands — at every division, against real college roster data — without guessing, hoping, or waiting on a coach to call you back?
From a former D1 recruiting coordinator who is also a parent going through this himself.
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You don't know where your athlete's times actually put them. You don't know if they're a D1 recruit, a D2 recruit, or a D3 recruit. You don't know when to start reaching out to coaches, what to say when you do, or how involved you're supposed to be as a parent.
You've Googled it. You've looked at Runcruit or TFRRS and come away more confused than when you started. Maybe your athlete's high school coach said "don't worry about it yet." Maybe you've already sent emails to a few programs and heard nothing back. Either way, you're stuck. And you have this quiet, nagging feeling that other families are further along than you.
You're probably not behind. But the families who are ahead of you aren't smarter or better connected. They started with better information. The recruiting process is genuinely complex. Roster caps, scholarship structures, the transfer portal, international recruits. The whole landscape shifted again in 2025 in ways that even families inside the sport are struggling to keep up with. What looks like confusion on your end isn't a reflection of how hard you've tried. It's a reflection of how much is deliberately kept behind closed doors.
I'm Jay Johnson. I spent six years as a recruiting coordinator at the University of Colorado. The person inside the room deciding who to recruit and why. I've coached distance runners for over 25 years. And now I'm a parent with a daughter who's a junior and wants to run in college. I've been on both sides of this process. And I'm tired of watching good families lose months, and sometimes the right school entirely, to mistakes nobody warned them were coming.
So I wrote down the five mistakes I've watched families make for over two decades. Every one of them is fixable once you can actually see it.
What's in the guide
- 01 The timing mistake that puts families months behind Most families treat recruiting as a senior-year activity. By then, some programs have already filled their spots, and the ones with scholarship money are usually the first to go.
- 02 The division trap that quietly costs the most opportunity Your athlete might be a strong recruit at the D2 or D3 level right now. But if D1 is the only door you're knocking on, you'll never find that out. By the time you do, the calendar is against you.
- 03 The email that gets deleted by college coaches There's a specific kind of outreach email that coaches delete without reading. Most families send exactly that email. It isn't rude or wrong. It just signals that the family doesn't yet understand how the process works on the other side of the inbox.
- 04 What most parents get wrong about scholarships The rules changed in 2025. Full rides work differently than most families expect, and the schools offering them aren't always the ones you'd guess. Most families haven't caught up to how this actually works now.
- 05 The commitment mistake that undoes months of good work One timing error at the end of the process can unravel everything you did right at the beginning. It's the most avoidable mistake on this list, and one of the most common.
Why this guide is different from the rest of the internet
Most of what you'll find online about college running recruiting is written by people who've never sat in a recruiting meeting. Or it's written by services trying to upsell you a $3,000 package before you understand what you actually need.
This guide isn't either of those. It's the same five-mistake conversation I'd have with a friend's family across the kitchen table. Six years of recruiting decisions on one side. Twenty-five years of coaching athletes on the other. And now, the parent's seat at the table.
"Coach Jay was extremely helpful to our family. We are well into the recruiting process and needed help navigating aspects like communicating with schools, the best questions to ask, timelines, tips on making hard decisions and more. Jay's energy, experience, and wisdom are unparalleled in the industry. If your family needs guidance or advice regarding XC and/or track & field recruiting, Jay is your guy."
— Next Mile Recruiting parent
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The free guide shows you what most families get wrong. The Clarity System shows you exactly where your athlete stands.
Enter your athlete's times and see which programs across every division are a realistic fit, filtered by what your family can actually afford. Performance standards built from real college roster data, not what school websites publish. Not a guess. Not a ranking.
Actual numbers from actual rosters.
Over the next few days after you sign up, I'll send you a few more emails breaking down what's actually changed in 2025 and how to think about your athlete's recruiting options. Grab the guide above and you'll be the first to know when the Clarity System opens.
I built Next Mile Recruiting because I kept watching families go through this process without the information they needed to do it well. And I knew that information existed. It just lived inside college programs, not inside Google or ChatGPT.
I spent six years as a Division I recruiting coordinator at the University of Colorado. Before that and since, I've coached distance runners at every level for over 25 years. Now I'm a parent with a daughter who's a junior and wants to run in college. This is personal for me in a way it wasn't before. The information families need to navigate this process shouldn't require knowing someone on the inside to find.