A look back 5 years ago - Where are the top middle school prospects now?

I think you should have added in 1500 times if you didn't because outside of middle schools most kids were running AAU and USATF and ran quicker than some of these times but never would have run 1600 or miles just 1500s. I'd say the majority of good 7th and 8th graders stay really good they just have a lot more competition in high school so don't always become big names.

Some phenoms work out. Some disappear. One of the girls my daughters used to run against won a national youth title. Now she is barely JV. Another one they used to beat is now one of the better runners at NXN for multiple years. Some kids get quick gains early by running too much mileage at too young an age and destroy their bones. Others mature early and don’t progress as much later. Some have it forced on them and drop it because this is a sport that requires personal investment to excel. My kids have progressed gradually. They didn’t run much mileage early or even now. One cares more about soccer, which is great. To their own selves be true.

https://results.adkinstrak.com/meets/6486/events/xc/220742

That's the 2020 13-14 year old boys 4K at the AAU Cross Country Championships.

Look at the names that were in that race. It might have been the deepest youth race ever.

Wow, great data! Looking at the top 25 every single one has been successful to different degrees. I think this shatters the idea that the top middle schoolers burn out and don't do well in HS and College.

Really? Most of them are not the top kids today.

You're right, 1500 is the national standard for organized youth club track.

The full mile is rarely offered, the 1600 even less.

Real question, is this work OP did actually as rigorous as the work expected of your average college graduate or masters holder or average letsrun-ish person making 70-130k salary?

And how long it took his to make this list

Agreed

Sorry to bump this so late. I did use and convert lists for the 1500, 1600, and full mile, knowing there were gonna be a lot of club results that used the 1500 as well as Oregon/Vermont/Rhode Island

I’ve looked at the data for high school girls as I have young daughters who run. I’ve noticed that most of the top high school girls started fairly young- usually in middle school sometimes elementary. They weren’t always the best in their class but they were fairly good. Sub 2:20 800m, sub 5:10 1600m in 8th grade. The very best ones often don’t improve much. Obviously there are exceptions like Sadie Engelhart and Paige Sheppard.

Really, The only one that is doing well in College that I can recall is Lexy

This is a really narrow take on what "successful" means. What percentage of high school runners even get to compete in their state meet? What percentage of high school runners get recruited to D1 universities? As a guy who did neither, I call both of those successful!

To add to the above regarding "successful" - getting your degree paid for at a halfway decent school is worth more than most OT qualifiers who you can't name off the top of your head make through "professional" running in their whole post-collegiate running career. Anybody who manages to do that is a huge success by any reasonable standard.

(1) Very few of the runners setting the top marks today are part of the list of the ‘Top Middle School Prospects’ from five years ago.

(2) Today’s top runners definitely have results from Middle School, but they just weren't as good back then.

(3) Amazingly, many athletes at the top of the Middle School ranks from five years ago just disappeared off the radar.

We conclude,
“To all the young high school runners out there who feel like everyone has a headstart on you, just remember it means less than you may think. The whole playing field can change in just a couple years. Keep at it!”

The major takeaway to me is just how big the range is. Everything from never again breaking 5 or quitting running altogether to sub-9 for 3200 or 1:50 for 800. A much much bigger spread than for your typical above average runner.

thanks for posting. This was a lot of work and a really fascinating analysis

Couple things I noticed, most of the rural and small town kids on the list fell off of a map, I'm assuming because of the lack of competition in high school where they are. Always felt it's possible for a talented athlete to get to 4:37-4:40 without much training, but 4:35 was the real hump where you needed a good mix of competition and training. All of the kids on the list running that fast are from major metro areas and it seems like they were able to continue running at a higher level because of not only puberty but the high competition in their area, coupled with decent training. Feel bad for that one kid on the list who it took until his junior year to beat his middle school PR again and then he quit, that must've been mental anguish.

Granted we know next to nothing about how most of them trained before or after 8th grade, but assuming the variability in training wasn't too wild and most of them didn't train too heavily before middle school and most did about what most of their peers do during high school, it's a nice illustration about how a person's untrained/lightly trained baseline performance and a person's response to training can be quite different.