Man, I feel like I did a really poor job of articulating my point, my son's situation and my son's coach. The 2-mile run thing is done now. It was really just a week 1 deal - day 1 for 2/3 of the team, 2 days for all but 2 kids and 5 days for those last 2. And no kid who failed was prevented from practicing and taking part in all activities. The "punishment" was having to keep running it every day until you passed. Personally, I think it was mostly about trust, ensuring none of his recruits got lazy over the summer and to set a serious tone from day 1 that playing there would not be easy. Again, I dig the concept even though my son failed the first day. I promise he won't fail when he reports this coming fall and I think that's an important lesson and a big win for my son.
While I have never spoken personally with the coach about the 2-mile deal, I did meet for hours with him on our visit and have had multiple conversations with him since then. I have a solid feel for who he is and the way he runs his program. For starters, speed and versatility are hallmark pieces of his program. He doesn't recruit 1B or PO's. He told me "why would I recruit guys who can only do one thing?" He is not a fan of high school POs at all as he prefers guys who are mentally used to competing every day, so his pitching staff is almost exclusively made up of 2-way guys. They only become POs once they get to college and only after he's evaluated them more and bounced that up against the needs of the team. You may not care for his particular approach, but considering he routinely sends 2/3 of his roster on to D1s, regularly has top 20 team GPAs in the NJCAA, has won 30+ games each season for 10 years straight, is the winningest coach in the history of the program and has very low negative attrition, there's an argument to made that his methods are quite effective and attractive. I want a tough road for my kid so long as it's fair. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.