So this has frustrated me my whole college career and it finally came to a boil today. I run for a really good D2 program in XC and Track. In fact, all the sports my school has are really good, we have national championships in a few sports. Anyways, the problem is my school spends practically no money on our 14 athletic teams (4 million a year which seems like a lot until you realize D1 football coaches make more than that in one year). Most of that money goes to the basketball/volleyball/softball teams as they have to fly to different schools which is totally fair. We have a sponsorship deal with Nike but we still have to pay for any team apparel and get no free shoes (Many schools get this). It did lead to a funny moment at nationals when we were warming up and none of us had any team apparel on because nobody bought the really expensive gear while other teams were staring at us, trying to figure out who we were.

Ok I digress, so our program has no money to go to any meets. In fact, every year we have to do fundraising and send out letters to friends,families,coworkers,etc to get money for our program. I feel like I'm in still in high school in that regard. All the meets we go to are 1-2 hours away and we race the local community colleges,smaller private schools and sometimes other teams in our conference.

It sucks.

I feel like I'm not able to push myself physically and mentally when I have to run by myself the majority of the race and think I could be running faster if I actually had some competition to work with. Occasionally our coach will enter us into good meets but that's all he does. We have to figure out the transportation, shelter, food (no school money either). So usually I'm stuck in a hotel room with 5 other guys because we're all poor as shit lol. I'm good friends with a lot of guys on other teams in our conference and it's extremely frustrating seeing them go to California every other week and post great times when I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere racing on some worn out track.

I came to my school to get an education, and that is the most important part and I tell myself that all the time. I'm really happy I ended up here, but sometimes I really wonder what would have happened if I went to a different school.

Anyways, thanks for letting me rant. I hope I didn't sound too much like a baby.