The more I listen to Gladwell talk about running the more I think the guy is completely full of it with regard to everything he opines about as an "expert" and "deep thinker."
Scoring cross-country 20-deep is not even a solution looking for problem, it's creating a problem where none existed. Cross-country is already dominated by wealthy schools with large roster sizes, this just makes it worse
I was someone who ran on a high school team that was decent by but struggled to field a team of 14 guys total. I can think of nothing more demotivating than realizing that getting commitment from 5 guys is pointless because the team isn't even going to be able to score, or at best is going to rely on some kid running 25 minutes who is only on the team so he can have some extracurricular for his college resume.
After reading Malcolm's original article and then yours and David Epstein's responses, I decided to write a response blog, too: https://pamakidscoach.wordpress.com/2022/08/14/my-response-to-malcolm-gladwell/
The more I listen to Gladwell talk about running the more I think the guy is completely full of it with regard to everything he opines about as an "expert" and "deep thinker."
Scoring cross-country 20-deep is not even a solution looking for problem, it's creating a problem where none existed. Cross-country is already dominated by wealthy schools with large roster sizes, this just makes it worse
I was someone who ran on a high school team that was decent by but struggled to field a team of 14 guys total. I can think of nothing more demotivating than realizing that getting commitment from 5 guys is pointless because the team isn't even going to be able to score, or at best is going to rely on some kid running 25 minutes who is only on the team so he can have some extracurricular for his college resume.