Dude wins SC State XC Championship wearing high-top Air Jordan's (great picture)

What a baller!! thats awesome haha! I don't care how small the class is he owned them wearing basketball shoes!! in grass!

the showboating sounds funny wrote:

“I was like, ‘God, why is this guy celebrating? I’m right behind him. He doesn’t know it.’ And then he turned around and saw me and sped up a little bit.

LOL. What a dis.

That's sad, but seriously why do we even seperate schools based on size when it comes to XC? I understand f'ball where small schools are at a disadvantage, but XC? Line everyone up and race, once the gun goes off it doesn't matter if you have a graduating class of 60 or 600.

4A was won by a sophomore, mark blackmon, but 3A was won a couple seconds faster by aaron ramirez, and second in 16:04 was a freshman! from hilton head, jack manesiotis. The kid must have some promise to run low 16 as a freshman in a state where distance runners are just not developed at all.

Incidentally, on the segregation in sports issue, in Savannah, just across the border from Hilton Head, youth football rules and in the eleven football fields of simultaneous action on Saturdays in the fall, you will not find a single white kid.

optime wrote:

"Not a sport"...I can't stand people like you. I have a fat ass kid that I know who is 200 pounds overweight who says track/cc aren't sports, I tell him just b/c you can't do it doesn't mean it's not a sport. Open up what little brain you have and realize that runners work/train harder than any basketball player.

I play real sports, not trying to be the best at exercising.

aquafina wrote:

That's sad, but seriously why do we even seperate schools based on size when it comes to XC? I understand f'ball where small schools are at a disadvantage, but XC? Line everyone up and race, once the gun goes off it doesn't matter if you have a graduating class of 60 or 600.

Why is a small school at a disadvantage for football but not XC? It all comes down to the talent walking the halls. When speaking of public schools, where a coach only has to work with what he/she is given by the incoming student population, the odds of finding 5 who can run under 17:00 for 5k are lower in a school with a grad class of 60 than for a school with a grad class of 600. The same can be said for the amount of football talent walking the halls. Or bball, baseball, any sport. It is no different. Sure, there can be studs at the A level, too, but show me an state champion A-size public school anywhere in the country that has the kind of depth on its xc team that the AAAA teams at the state meet in the same state have. At best, they are extremely rare.

Sounds like Hampton could've run quite a bit faster had it been necessary. Good for him. I love it when people who aren't all about the running lifestyle and accessories race well.

optime wrote:

"Not a sport"...I can't stand people like you. I have a fat ass kid that I know who is 200 pounds overweight who says track/cc aren't sports, I tell him just b/c you can't do it doesn't mean it's not a sport. Open up what little brain you have and realize that runners work/train harder than any basketball player.

Do you honestly think that guy was being serious? Why would someone who doesn't even consider XC to be a sport be posting on Letsrun?

I post here and don't consider it a real sport. Yes, it's a skill-laden activity, but it's hard to call it a true sport.

Love the win in the barely-laced up Air Jordans, is that a 5k world record for high tops? I did a five mile run in Chuck Taylors back in HS and I thought my legs were going to fall off afterwards.

Sweet run by that freshman in 3A, that's a speedy time for anyone, let alone a freshman.

aquafina wrote:

That's sad, but seriously why do we even seperate schools based on size when it comes to XC? I understand f'ball where small schools are at a disadvantage, but XC? Line everyone up and race, once the gun goes off it doesn't matter if you have a graduating class of 60 or 600.

Money. More divisions=Room for more teams to be invited=more money for the state athletic association

Distance running is skill-laden? Really? My 2 year old nephew can run. I don't necessarily consider it a "skill" in the same vain as hitting a fast ball, throwing a sinker, hurdling at near top speed, hitting an ace serve right up the middle on the T, all the skills required for pole vaulting or catching a football traveling at 80mph while you're running as fast as you can at an angle to the football's trajectory then having to jump to do it. Those require what I consider examples of sports "skills."

Now, distance running does require a certain kind of physical prowess, most obviously endurance. Yes, this endurance must be trained. But those other sports above require physical prowess in addition to the skills required, also, such as speed, power, strength, agility. There are certain skills required for successful distance racing but the set of actual physical skills required for distance running is pretty small.

And just to be clear, distance running is my favorite sport of all. It is my first love of all sports and continues to be in the top 2. anyway.....

pluss wrote:

I post here and don't consider it a real sport. Yes, it's a skill-laden activity, but it's hard to call it a true sport.

Yeah, but one must also consider the fact that you're a troll.

mighty porn stache wrote:

And just to be clear, distance running is my favorite sport of all. It is my first love of all sports and continues to be in the top 2. anyway.....

What the hell are you trying to say?

Yes and he can throw and tackle as well. So from your logic that would mean that football doesn't require skill.In other words, no, your nephew cannot run. Running fast for a set duration requires an inordinate amount of skill. So much skill in fact that very few people on this planet can do it.

mighty porn stache wrote:

Distance running is skill-laden? Really? My 2 year old nephew can run.

uh...brain fart? Wow, that was a horrible set of sentences I wrote.

Distance running is my first love. It remains in my top two favorite sports to follow and participate in.

I guess that fixes it.

My first week of XC I did't know ay better and I practiced in Jordans. I didn't think there could be anything better. When I got my first pair of running shoes a week later, it was a HUUUUGE difference. Go try and run a 17 min. 5k on grass in Jordans...let me know if you feel like pumping your arms afterwords. This is such an awesome story...

mighty porn stache wrote:

Distance running is skill-laden? Really? My 2 year old nephew can run.

Can he run 7.5 miles with an 82 inch average stride length at 170 strides per minute?

If not, then his skill has not yet developed to this level.

I did not say there was no skill involved in distance running. But when compared with many other sports, the set of skills involved in distance running (including racing) is fairly limited. I kind of put sports on a continuum of ranging from those that require tremendous skills but lower physical effort (like golf) to those that require great physical effort but fewer skills (like distance running).

Anyway, this is detracting from the thread. The kid winning the state meet in Jordans is cool to see. I had two black xc team mates in college who ran in SC during HS. Both were exceedingly talented, but very very underdeveloped. One of them actually had no xc team to run on but was a 1A state champ in the 1600 and 3200m in track. The longest run he ever did before college was 4 miles. As a frosh he ran 9:2x for 3k steeple. By soph xc season he ran 32:10 for 10k at Furman's course that hosted nationals in 1999 (I think it was 99). Considering that he admittedly did almost no running over the summer, that shows serious talent, but lack of desire. There is tremendous mid-distance and distance running talent among the african american population of that state, but it is severely underdeveloped. As mentioned, football and basketball teams in SC produce many stars, but there's a lot of kids that won't run distance.