What happens if you fail to recruit enough freshmen onto your team? Can you catch up by recruiting them the following year when they are sophomores? The answer is “partially”. There is no question that runners who began their career after their freshman year have made substantial contributions to their teams. Recruiting new sophomores can be a great supplement to freshmen recruiting; however, it cannot be a substitute for freshmen recruiting.
Of the six state championship teams (1A-private thru AAAAAA) in 2012, all six teams had at least three of their top five runners begin their careers as freshmen. That said, five of the six teams had at least one of their top five begin their careers as a sophomore and at least one of those six teams would probably not have won state without that “sophomore supplement”.
The reason that new sophomores need to be a supplement to rather than a substitute for new freshmen goes back to runner development. New sophomores are, as a group, no faster than new freshmen. The difference is that they are a year behind in their development as runners. As a group, they will not catch up; however, there are a precious few who can really help. It is probably not an accident that five of the six state championship teams had at least one runner in their top five who had once been new sophomores.
It is interesting to see that even though the dynasty programs recruit more freshman than do their contender and also-ran brethren, they still have not pumped the well dry as they then recruit more new sophomores than do other programs.
When determining a benchmark, I did not want to reward teams who recruit a lot of sophomores whom they should have recruited a year earlier. Again, these new sophomores are supposed to be a supplement and not a mainstay. Whereas there are some other public schools that have recruited more than the 3% of the sophomore class as did Brookwood, Brookwood is the public benchmark because these new sophomores are over and above already plentiful freshman classes. It is also interesting to note that although Athens Academy recruited more sophomores per capita than any other school in the state, they won the state championship with their top five all having begun their xc careers as freshmen.
Dynasty Programs:4.7%
Contender Programs:3.4%
Also Ran Programs:2.1%
Public Benchmark: Brookwood 3.0%
Private Benchmark: Athens Academy 10%