White/Yellow/ Grey/Black: What Do the Groups Mean?

As most of you are aware, we divide our athletes into groups based on our team’s colors.  This is done strategically based on the coach’s assessment of our runner’s needs. 

For example, new athletes and our younger runners are in the white group because we want to give them the chance to learn our drills, exercises, and routines.  White group runners focus on fundamentals.  Alternatively, our most experienced runners are in the black group.  These athletes are largely self-sufficient, and the coaches have faith in their ability to effectively execute the drills and workouts with minimal oversight.  The yellow and grey groups are our largest flock and require most of our attention because they are capable of grasping the drills and workouts and at the same time have the most to learn and grow from our coaching.

We apply our color groups loosely, and from day to day might shift an athlete between groups based on what we see in their performance.  Make no mistake - all of the groups are important to us.  There is no priority, as we believe every one of our runners are equally vital to our team.  We divide the athletes so that we can better tailor our workouts to each hawk’s ability. 

But it is also critical that our athletes understand that each group level includes its own set of expectations.  We want every hawk to improve, and grow more competitive, working his or her way up the color groups.  At the same time, if an athlete is struggling to demonstrate his or her commitment during practice, or appears to need more remedial attention in order to improve, we might ask that hawk to move down a group until he or she is ready to move up again.  In this way we can do our best to support the runners who come to each practice ready to run, while giving others who need more attention the help they need to improve.

We hope this helps clear things up related to the color groups, but we are always happy to chat more about this with anyone who might have questions. 
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And as always, Run Tough!