The 2 Recruiting Mistakes Most Families Make First

Mistake #1

Waiting Until Senior Year to Start the Process

This is the most common timing mistake in distance running recruiting, and it's the hardest one to recover from because you can't get the time back.

Why Families Wait

Most families think of recruiting as a senior-year activity. It makes sense — your kid is still learning how to race as a sophomore, still balancing bigger mileage as a junior, while taking on a challenging courseload. Why rush, or put pressure on them? They'll be faster next year. Or maybe your kid's high school coach told you not to worry about it yet. And if you think a scholarship is in the cards, you think the offers will come when they run some big PRs. That's not completely wrong, but the flip side is an athlete with similar PRs who reached out early is already on the coach's radar.

What's Actually Happening While You Wait

College coaches aren't waiting. They're building lists of recruits as early as sophomore year for national caliber recruits, and starting in March and April for juniors. They're identifying athletes whose trajectory suggests they'll be competitive by April and May of their senior year.

By the time a family starts reaching out in September or October of senior year, many programs have already identified their top recruiting targets, inviting athletes on visits and when a scholarship is in play, extending those offers. The roster spots that were available in the spring are spoken for by fall. And for some prestigious Division 3 schools that can't offer scholarships — schools like Amherst and Williams and Denison — they run out of spots as early as September. I spoke to a D3 coach at a school like this who said she's had to turn away recruits who would have been the best recruit they've had in years in December because they had filled all the spots by late September.

What Changes When You Start Earlier

Families who begin the process during the fall of junior year have time to build relationships with coaches rather than cold-emailing them under a deadline. As you likely know, the junior year track season is a crucial season in this process. Athletes will run PRs that give college coaches an idea of where they would fit on their team. Track times are much more important than cross country times because you can compare them within a state and from state to state. Sophomore times may matter for the 50-100 best sophomores in the country as some D1 programs will start recruiting the summer before junior year, but for the tens of thousands of athletes that will eventually run in college, it's the junior track times that matter.

Starting earlier doesn't mean committing earlier. It means giving yourself the space to make a better decision when the time comes.

Mistake #2

Fixating on Division I When D2 or D3 Is the Better Fit

This is the most expensive mistake on this list — not in dollars, but in time and opportunity cost.

Why Families Make This Mistake

Division I has brand recognition. It's what you see on TV. When someone at a dinner party asks "Where does your kid run?" saying a Power 4 school sounds impressive. D2 and D3 carry a stigma in many families' minds — they think it means the athlete wasn't good enough. And nobody wants to feel like their kid is settling.

How College Running Is Actually Organized

Part of the reason families default to D1 is that nobody has explained what the other options actually are. So here's the map.

There are roughly 1,500 college programs where a high school distance runner can compete. They're spread across five levels, and the differences between them matter more than most families realize.

Division I is the most visible level and the one with the biggest budgets. It's also the most competitive recruiting environment, especially now. For distance runners, the combination of international recruiting and the transfer portal has made D1 roster spots significantly harder to get than they were even five years ago.

Division II programs can offer athletic scholarships and often provide a strong balance of competitive running, coaching attention, and real opportunity to contribute from day one. For a lot of athletes, D2 is not a consolation prize. It's where they develop best.

Division III programs are often small liberal arts schools that offer exceptional educations. The rule is that there are no athletic scholarships, but there is often strong need-based financial aid. What's changed in the last decade is that the culture at many D3 programs has kids training hard and competing at a level most families don't expect.

NAIA operates outside the NCAA entirely, which is why many families don't consider it. That's a mistake. NAIA programs can offer scholarships, and some have excellent coaching and development environments.

JUCO (junior college) is a two-year path. It can be a smart stepping stone to a four-year program or a way for a family to manage costs while an athlete continues to develop.

These are not tiers on a ladder. They're different environments with different mixes of athletic competition, academic fit, financial aid, coaching, and opportunity. The families who understand that build much better target lists than families who only know the label "Division I."

What Families Don't See

The Division I distance running landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years - and not in your favor. As many as half of the athletes on many D1 distance rosters are now international recruits. The transfer portal means coaches are also filling spots with experienced college athletes who are already proven at the collegiate level. An American high school runner is now competing for roster spots against Kenyan, Ethiopian, and European athletes who may already have faster PRs, plus current college athletes looking to transfer. The math has gotten brutal, especially for male athletes.

Meanwhile, D2 and D3 programs have invested heavily in coaching, facilities, and recruiting. I interviewed Travis Floeck, a D2 head coach at Colorado Mesa, and what he described — the coaching attention, the development focus, the competitive environment — would surprise most families who've written off D2 without looking into it. A 4:20 1600m boy and a 5:20 girl both have limited options at the D1 level. Those same athletes are strong recruits at competitive D2 programs and top-tier D3 programs — programs with excellent coaching, real team culture, and in many cases a better development environment for a young runner.

The Real Cost of D1 Tunnel Vision

Every month a family spends chasing programs where their athlete isn't realistically competitive is a month not spent building relationships with programs where they would thrive. I've seen families spend all of junior year emailing Power 4 coaches who were never going to recruit their kid, then scramble in the fall of senior year to find D2 and D3 programs — programs that would have been thrilled to recruit them six months earlier but have since filled their roster.

The families who end up happiest four years later are almost always the ones who picked the right fit, not the biggest name. The right coach and the right teammates can transform your athlete into an exceptional collegiate runner. To think that all of those situations are at schools where the football team plays on TV on Saturday isn't correct.

So what should you do? Build a target list that spans divisions based on where your athlete actually fits — athletically, academically, socially, and financially. Visit before you eliminate. Talk to coaches at every level. Understanding which programs are realistic at each division level — and which ones are a reach, a fit, or a safety — is one of the core things we help families figure out at Next Mile Recruiting.