What happens to so many high school phenoms?

A guy I know who is trying to get his PGA pro card was a top junior golfer and state champ. He came up playing with Will Zalatoris, Scottie Sheffler and Jordan Spieth. Basically, you come out of HS thinking that you are going to be able to continue to improve and compete at the same high level as in HS. But your freshman year, you go out an there are dozens of college kids who are just as good as you are and a bunch that are on a level that is way ahead of you. Suddenly, you realize that you only have four very short years to reach a completely new level of performance or else you will graduate and go straight into sitting in an office for the rest of your life. The pressure is immense and most respond by either just doing the best they can and just survive it or flame out and give up. In short, HS ability needed to be a state champ and a blue chip recruit ends up becoming entry level ability needed to get to NCAA champ level and potential pro. Most just do not have the talent to take that next step and HS success is no guaranty that an athlete will be able to have continued success.

Any of the things you mention, individually or in combination, may be the reason. People often change a lot during college, developing new interests and having older ones fade or vanish. And some high school phenoms are phenoms because they mature earlier than their competitors. Once those competitors mature the high school phenoms aren't as successful. If you had been one of the top ten high school cross country runners in your state it may be frustrating to struggle to be one of the top seven at your school.

There's a lot here that makes sense.

Coaching isn't rocket science but some coaches are better than others. There has to be a reason that runners would rather run for coach X than coach Y. Some of it is the personality of the coach and how the athlete perceives that they will mesh with the coach but there is some technique and intuition involved. A coach has to know when to push some athletes and perhaps when to hold them back. Additionally, not all of the guys on the team will be on the same schedule.

The diva theory probably is nonsense and perhaps I should not have mentioned it. What I really mean is that a guy or girl is really good, they know that they're good, and because of that, may not put in the required effort. I guess even someone that isn't a diva could be that way.

Part of the reason that I brought it up is that I can remember an interview with NAU's Mike Smith and he mentioned the types of guys he looks for and recruits. He specifically mentioned that "divas" get crossed off of the list along with those that have intrusive parents that are overinvolved, and those that put their own interests ahead of the team's. He stated that he just can't work with those runners.

You're partially right and it probably was unfair of me to mention some guys by name. If I posted this as a registered user I would edit my post.

The intent of my question and post is not to denigrate a runner. I'm merely wondering why some guys don't seem to live up to expectations. Some of the expectations are not their own, though. Many are expectations that parents or others have. Perhaps a lot of the guys go in and don't have clear expectations of themselves.

Social media is hard on a lot of kids and just not runners. In the past, many on this forum were relentless in abusing Mary Cain. There have been a lot of others that have been abused as well. The issues that she had run a lot deeper than the words of some here, though. Many were out of bounds but I doubt that her career was ruined because of that. It is very good advice for the kids to stay off of forums. Even staying off of social media is sometimes good but that isn't going to happen.

Kevin Beck makes some interesting observations here about runners peaking in high school or in college all reach their plateau with very little gains after that. Of course the new spikes change that equation at the moment and he doesn't consider how late puberty in girls can slow them down., cause stres fractures.

https://kevinbeck.substack.com/p/the-tinman-effect

your thread is too long wrote:

You’re beating a dead horse and missing the big problems. Cooper was/is a criminal. So was Danielson. Hard to train when you’re in trouble with the law. I went to school with a multi time state champion in all three running seasons. Gatorade award winner. He joined the army and never looked back. And there’s at least two short documentaries on Michael Granville. There’s millions of athletes just like him in many sports that are talented but can’t handle college because they actually have to take tests and learn (usually). Derek Rose and Amare Stoudemire are glaring examples of athletes that gamed the system.

Which Danielson? Tim? After high school he went to BYU and became an engineer. He was convicted of murdering his wife when he was in his 60s.

And who is this Cooper criminal?

Precious Roy wrote:

A guy I know who is trying to get his PGA pro card was a top junior golfer and state champ.

At the top there is much room. Say there are about 100 american PGA golfers on tour and thr average 10 year careers. That is 10 golfers/year. You are going to end up tons if state champs and all americans who dont sniff the PGA.

Same thing in track. Lets say you the 10th best guy in the country. Go to college and there are 60 guys(say 40 americans and 20 international) and just making nationals is huge. And then there are the 30 guys who were right behind you and 2-3 of them didnt train in HS and blow by you when they start running more than 25mpw.

through in things like luck (4 years of injury free running in HS versus missing a couple seasons in collage) and you get different results.

Someonewhoknows wrote:

You are still wrong about Horter. His problems are all COVID-related. He was actually doing decently well before COVID hit him. 19th at the Region in CC as a freshman, was regularly beating his fellow Ohio classmate Arjun Jha.

is this accurate? I’m pretty sure that he was regularly beating jha during his freshman year but after that, and before covid, jha never was beaten by him again in track or xc. jha’s track prs are also better

dont think so wrote:

Someonewhoknows wrote:

You are still wrong about Horter. His problems are all COVID-related. He was actually doing decently well before COVID hit him. 19th at the Region in CC as a freshman, was regularly beating his fellow Ohio classmate Arjun Jha.

is this accurate? I’m pretty sure that he was regularly beating jha during his freshman year but after that, and before covid, jha never was beaten by him again in track or xc. jha’s track prs are also better

some of horter’s other fellow ohio guys that he regularly beat in high school are also running better. guys like lucas bons, andy payne, jha, chad johnson, matt scrape, cj ambrosio, ryan adkins, joe riordan, zac kirk

Wetmore is without a doubt a great college coach, but basically none of the kids he coached in hs went on to do anything in college or afterwards

I think about half of the kids our program sends to college finish out their college career. I've found that most of their college coaches write great plans on paper, but they aren't well executed, leading to injury cycles. These are the common things that I've noticed in those that don't finish:

- The training they are expected to do in college is not the training they were told about when they were recruited. We've had kids that ran 60 mpw the first week of practice that never ran above 35 mpw in HS (and were told they'd run 40-45 their first year during the recruiting process).

- Bad injury management. It's amazing how little rehab and treatment girls got for overuse injuries at most schools. Coaches almost always sacrificed long term health for short term results (the coaches that did prioritize long term growth and were willing to sit a kid were also the ones that had consistent Top 20 teams).

- Running too fast at practice. Most of the training plans I've seen from college coaches are good on paper, but aren't executed as written. Kids end up racing at practice and coaches get caught up in the excitement and celebrate them running fast. Running too fast becomes the culture and kids end up injured from a lack of recovery.

- Different culture/priorities. Our HS team culture is extremely tight knit and kids really feel like they belong to a community. They are willing to make a lot of sacrifices for the team because they know how supported and cared for they are. A lot of college coaches don't make this connection with athletes (I think it probably comes more naturally for many HS coaches from their teaching background) and some athletes do struggle when they don't have the emotional support they are used to. Running becomes less of a priority for them because they don't see the value in making sacrifices for a group that doesn't give them support in return. That's not going to matter for some highly intrinsically motivated kids, but it will for others.

One thing to keep in mind - many HS coaches do not want to become college coaches. HS coaches often make more money when you factor in the teaching salary and public school retirement systems and there is less travel which is friendlier for coaches with young families. There are some tremendous college coaches, but there are also some really really bad college coaches.

Some colleges you can just look at their results and know how bad they are at both recruiting and coaching. Other schools do good at recruiting but then don’t coach the athletes when they get there. An example of that one would be Cal Poly SLO. They recruit good athletes because they are in a good location, the school is good and it’s affordable.

interesting take wrote:

Wetmore is without a doubt a great college coach, but basically none of the kids he coached in hs went on to do anything in college or afterwards

who is wetmore

speaking of top ohio high school runners, i just saw that hunter moore is now at walsh

that’s the 4th school he has attended. e michigan, indiana, otterbein, and now walsh. Hopefully he’s doing this for academic reasons and is doing ok. he’s still a solid runner and walsh will have a good team this year. If moore doesn’t get injured he should be one of the top d2 guys in the country this year

The first things you listed have been discussed so I'll only address the last one. Distance running is an individual sport and not group therapy. A runner is motivated by improvement and some will quit running when they realize they are never going to as good as they want to be. What self-motivated runner needs emotional support?

This thread is about HS school phenoms and some will be part of a successful program like Newbury Park or Jesuit HS in Sacramento, while others will be in HSs that don't even field a team. The commonality is that they are all motivated. There was a good runner that I ran against in HS who lived in area that was within the boundaries of one of the inner-city schools. He was the only guy on the XC team and the only one on the track for the distance races in league dual meets, but he was a dedicated, successful HS runner and he went on to be a great runner at Sac State.

You absolutely have to have a lot of self-motivation to be a great runner. I don't think anyone is going to argue against that. I also don't think it's realistic to expect everyone to be 100% 'on' all the time. Life happens and stressors outside the team can have major impacts on your training regardless of your motivation level. Some coaches get that and support athletes in tough moments better than others.

There hasn’t been a “great runner a Sac State” in a very long time. So you must be talking many years ago.

Have seen high school coaches where the only priority is nationals. Whatever it takes regardless of the long term effects on these very young runners. With boys mileage up to 80 miles a week how do you not burn out your athletes before they even get into college. Selfish.

The best distance coaches in this country at developing talent are at the HS level. College coaches who recruit well do well. Too many college coaches get a bunch of talent and run them into the ground, the guys who survive do well, but the one size fits all college coaches really are over rated.

Question Assumptions wrote:

There hasn’t been a “great runner a Sac State” in a very long time. So you must be talking many years ago.

His name was Mike Van Horn and he was a 1976 HS grad. He went on to run about 14:20/29:45 which was very competitive for D-2 and not too shabby for a 9:20 HS guy.