Please stop with, he's a horrible coach because his kids dont do well in college

what state are you in? 19 flat isn't competitive at all in my state for girls

denzel_vilsaint wrote:

what state are you in? 19 flat isn't competitive at all in my state for girls

Obviously not your state. Obviously there are plenty of smaller states and smaller divisions where 19:00 is a competitive girls time.

Thank you for bringing attention to yourself and showing us how awesome your state is. Moron.

Agree fully. Long story short, if kids improve a lot in college, it's more likely that they had sucky high school coaching. Too often this place gets this logic backwards.

Houston Joe wrote:

Agree fully. Long story short, if kids improve a lot in college, it's more likely that they had sucky high school coaching. Too often this place gets this logic backwards.

Yes and no. In the situation the OP described, then no, the fact that this girl isn't going to ever be a "top college runner" isn't the high school coach's fault. However, she SHOULD STILL IMPROVE. If he's literally gotten every ounce of performance and talent out of her in high school so she literally never PRs again, then he's overworked her, plain and simple. Barring chronic or career ending injuries, she should at least run faster than 19-minutes in college. She would need to run WAY faster than 19-minutes to ever be a "good college runner", so "doing well" is all relative here. For a girl like that, maybe getting down to 18:00 or 18:15 is going to be the long-term goal.

I think a good HS coach sets the kids up to do as well as they can in high school while still giving them somewhere to go in college. Don't run a guy into the ground with a string of 100+ mile weeks his senior year and have him burned out by the time he's in the NCAA. A kid shouldn't "peak" when they're 17 or 18 years old.

I had great high school training, got up to a 70-mile week and was extremely dedicated; like the ridiculous won't eat pizza in-season type of dedicated. My freshman year of college I ended up running my high school 2-mile PR in a workout. Just because you're dedicated in HS, doesn't mean you shouldn't have anywhere left to go in college.

at what age do you no longer want to have "somewhere to go"? 23? 27? 32?

I just want to know what is the science behind the idea that getting too fast at a young age prevents you from going as fast as you would have been able to go at some later age. Is this a different idea than "too much intense training breaks down the body and you can reach a point from which you never recover", or is it a different idea?

I agree with this.

Far too many times you see average or middling HS athletes end up at a D3 school, and then suddenly become really fast. Makes me wonder what would have happened if that athlete had a decent coach that landed them in a D1 program, and then with the incomporable resources the D1 program would have over the D3, how much faster they potentially would get.

Ending up at D3 can also be really hit or miss. Some really push you and make you a great runner. Others really hold you back and make you worse than you were in HS.

If you got that girl into a college program with some money, I think you've done your job. 28 minutes for a 5K is a horrendous starting point for a human being.

Another anecdote:

There was this one 200/400m runner on my D1 PAC-12 team. Walk-on, but varsity starting his freshman year.

He recalled to me he was JV all throughout HS. Ran something like 24 / 52 in HS, with no hope of running in college with those times. He linked up with a professional coach after graduating from HS.

After JUST 1 summer and fall of training his butt off with this coach, BAM he walked onto our team for the winter indoor season and was with us until he graduated from college. Never run "unattached" or any nonsense like that either.

How many D1 all-americans has York produced? And how many does the average high school produce? Not being cheeky, I'm really wondering what the numbers are because Joe Newton gets accused of burning runners out, but I suspect they have produced a lot more D1 all-americans than average.

The average HS produces probably no more than 1 All-American every decade at most. In fact most have probably never produced a single All-American.

I had numerous school records in my HS and a state championship and I was never an All-American, just to give you some perspective how hard it is to be All-American.

Not Cool Bro wrote:

Houston Joe wrote:

Agree fully. Long story short, if kids improve a lot in college, it's more likely that they had sucky high school coaching. Too often this place gets this logic backwards.

Yes and no. In the situation the OP described, then no, the fact that this girl isn't going to ever be a "top college runner" isn't the high school coach's fault. However, she SHOULD STILL IMPROVE.

. . .

I had great high school training, got up to a 70-mile week and was extremely dedicated; like the ridiculous won't eat pizza in-season type of dedicated. My freshman year of college I ended up running my high school 2-mile PR in a workout. Just because you're dedicated in HS, doesn't mean you shouldn't have anywhere left to go in college.

Generalizing from an individual male's experience to all females' experience is just ignorant. Some women change dramatically from high school to college.

At one of my college stops I recruited an outstanding high school runner--a real jewel on my best recruiting class to date. Well, between her indoor season as a HS senior and her freshman year in college, she did a lot of "growing" (let's just say that she'd always be the winner in a photo finish). She received knowledgeable and caring coaching in college (not by me--I was gone, but I knew the work of my successors), yet never returned to the level of her HS performances.

Does that mean she was overworked in high school? Not at all. It just means that she had a fundamentally different body in college. That happens.

It often happens *in* high school, as well: a girl will run fast times as a frosh, then work hard the rest of her HS years yet never improve. Did she get overworked as a 14-year-old? Not necessarily.

While maybe 10% do enough work in middle school and as freshmen and sophomores in HS so that when they get "fundamentally different" they can't improve, the vast majority of women can run faster than they could as girls. The biggest reason for this is that they start running seriously as freshmen. You don't peak in your first or second year, PERIOD.

Girls can be trained like boys and have mostly the same improvement curve. Women take years to build up to doing the amount they can really handle. Most coaches don't understand that and most women wouldn't believe or do it if they found a coach who knew it and tried to convince them to commit the years needed.

I've been a head coach in college for close to 20 years now, and I have often thought of this topic through those years. Although there are a lot of variables involved (some of which have already been brought up) I feel as though HS coaches can have a positive or negative impact on their HS athletes' potential for running well at the next level. I've had a number of kids who have come in off very low mileage in HS and their coaches tell me that they were "saving them for college." This coach isn't doing their athlete a huge favor (especially for boys) because it now takes years to get them up to the point where they can do enough volume to be competitive in a college 10k. I've also had some who seemed to be over worked. Meaning, they were doing college level volumes and workouts/intensities while they were in HS. This worked well for them in HS, but didn't seem to translate well to improvement at our level. I think there is some middle ground to be had here to both allow success in HS, while also leaving room for growth for college running. One of my hunches is that the HS programs that run high volumes (80+ for boys) and very intense/high volume interval work, really kind of fry their athletes physiologically and psychologically during a relatively fragile window of their lives. There's a lot of physical development going on between ages 14-18, and I'd suspect that there are some physiological implications to burning the candle at both ends during this window. Just my $.02.

formerD1 wrote:

Ending up at D3 can also be really hit or miss. Some really push you and make you a great runner. Others really hold you back and make you worse than you were in HS.

I would argue not all D1 schools can be a hit. I ran D1, the program progressed me in some areas, but not a huge growth. I'm now training myself and PRing in most events I ran in college. It's all about coaching, not Division level. East Africans can do what they do sans D1 facilities, surely D3 runners can do the same.

D1 schools typically offer better training partners and more resources. Not the case in every single scenario, but on the average it's true.

I've also always been a big believer that people often run to the level of those around them. One guy gets a big PR, and all of a sudden a slew of guys start coming after that time. The opportunity for that is just better in D1 then it is in the lower divisions, all else being equal.

As another poster mentioned, the OP has the right idea but the premise is wrong. I think that as a whole there are too many variables to compare college and HS success. Your talking about an 18 year old young adult and everything isn't black and white there. Joe Bill Dixon at West Plains is the example I always use because it's one I'm familiar with. His kids hit 100 MPW in the off season but it's slow miles and they do a whole lot of tempo work. Most of the college guys out of the program didn't fizzle in college because training. It was because they didn't have the disciplined team system, or their own personal priorities were off. I knew all of them that ran in college from about 04-10. Heck, he had 2 all Americans from the 02-03 class that dropped out after their sophomore year. His burnout rate may be 60-80% but I would argue that's average in college distance running anyways. My point is that's a program that hammers out more miles than anyone else in the country, but his runners still produced in college. Jason Sandfordt was a 9:10 kid turned 4-time all American in college cross country.

You may not see linear progression, but a runner shouldn't EVER peak at 18 unless the college system failed them, or they failed the college date. I don't think you can cross analyze college and high school performances. I know I hardly ran faster in college then HS BUT I stayed injured, lost appetite, and still got tuition paid for. I'd say any future development I wasted was worth tuition.

Newly Improved wrote:

As another poster mentioned, the OP has the right idea but the premise is wrong.

Indviduals are a total crap shoot but the OP point is right in general. Who is a better athelete: a 15:30 5k runner or a 16:00 min one? What if I told the 15:30 guy was running 70mpw while the 16:00 was running 30 mpw. That 15:30 guy might be a 16:30 on 35 mpw.

Why do people fail in college? It is a ton of things. You can get into a training system that doesn't fit you, unstructured college environment, you lose the injury lottery, or you lose motivation. I am guessing XC is a lot more fun when you are winning/top 5 races every week (i.e most footlocker/state champ guys) than when you are finishing like 50th+ every week. Going from being a big fish to a litte fish is mentally hard. You also get a lot of people realizing their dreams aren't going to happen. You realize that you are not going to be national/international talent. Those all kick in long before inability to improve or being mistrained in HS.

Spot On!!!

High School is a very difficult 4 year tightrope to balance for a coach and athlete. There is a saying out there that the 'PED' for high school runners is mileage. If you can get a kid to buy into running excessive mileage (60+) you will definitely have a kid be successful. Obviously talent is a factor, and combined with high mileage ANY halfway competent coach can get a kid to run fast. That being said, you are now in a very risky territory with regard to injury and burnout.

specific danger is what wrote:

at what age do you no longer want to have "somewhere to go"? 23? 27? 32?

I just want to know what is the science behind the idea that getting too fast at a young age prevents you from going as fast as you would have been able to go at some later age. Is this a different idea than "too much intense training breaks down the body and you can reach a point from which you never recover", or is it a different idea?

Good point. Particularly the mention of science, as it (casually) seems as if most/all of the commentary about proper developmental progression comes from coaches and their experience, not scientific evidence. And experience is great, of course, but it would be interesting to know if there is any science to inform the development debate.

If, in isolation, one hears the arguments about steady progression thru the 20's, it seems to make intuitive sense. And when you hear a very experienced and successful coach like Salazar talk about Rupp's gradual development, it is strengthened.

BUT, anyone who pays enough attention to track to know the above ALSO REGULARLY sees upper-level world class E. African teenagers and very early 20-somethings. The 18 or 19 year old put in the training to run 2:0X, or whatever. Was he going to run 2:0X MINUS a bunch if he had just been more "gradual" ??

I don't see how the last 2 paragraphs above jibe. Anyone?

I was basically just trying to say a high school coach shouldn't run their athletes into the ground doing too much so they are burned out by the time college comes.

You bring up an interesting question though and I don't have the answer. It's basically the "Alan Webb question". Would he have had a better pro career if he hadn't done the training to run 3:53 in HS? Most seem to agree that the intense training got him to 3:53 as well as his AR as a pro, but in the end hurt his chances at a longer career that might have yielded better finishes at a global championship. Hard to know though.

Fine, I'll tone down my original post. High school coaches, please just don't run your kids into the ground with ridiculous workloads that burn them out and get them chronically injured. If they don't improve in college because of other reasons whether it's injuries, partying or getting bigger boobs, so be it. Just don't ruin a potential "life long runner" so you can have a better shot at winning your league meet or making NXNs. It's not worth it.