HS football player runs 15:11

My post wasn't very clear. There is the talent for there to be a 4:20 miler in every high school in the nation. What I am saying is that there is immense talent buried beneath the hope of becoming a football star or baseball star or some other more popular sport.

Hope that clears up what I was trying to say.

Cory Thorne from NH started out as a football player in high school and went on to run steeple and xc NCAAs for Louisville.

After he quits football and decides he'd rather run instead

This kid's mom is probably freaking out watching her kid lose that much weight (including a lot of muscle) in less than a year. That said, he seems to have tremendous willpower and desire.

I know what youre trying to say and you have a point to an extent but i disagree. There is certainly undeveloped talent but I also think that the majority of fast people find the niche that fits them best. If you are the kid in middle school PE that beats all the other kids in the timed mile there is a much greater chance that youre going to do track/xc(or at least track if you play soccer). If there were that many people that could run that fast you would hear about stories like this all the time because there are plenty of people that quit football/soccer etc- that is what makes this more remarkable.

The main reason I dont like the idea is yet Again it is implying somewhat that people dont care about track and there are tons of football players who could beat the best runner in their school whenever they felt like it. This is simply not the case. As i said yesterday, and will continue to say, track is the #2 sport in the nation(and it is gaining on football)- there are a ton of people that do track - most of those fast people are in fact running track

D.B. Cooper wrote:

This kid's mom is probably freaking out watching her kid lose that much weight (including a lot of muscle) in less than a year. That said, he seems to have tremendous willpower and desire.

Wasn't this kid's coach, Chris Catton, coaching Jake Hurysz last year as well? That's two pretty big stories in back to back years.

"I am not racing to see who is the fastest; I am racing to see who has the most guts"

Now all he needs is the moustache!

...ahem...

Coley Candaele

4:07 miler, all-CIF quarterback in late '80s.

Man among boys.

thepinkmonkey wrote:

Of course, this thread caught my eye.

Being a HS first team all-state linebacker, college player and runner now for over 30 years, I can see that this kid has talent and knows the results which can come from hard work.

Very impressive. Wishing him continued success.

hey talk about yourself more.

all-CIF athlete of the year wrote:

...ahem...

Coley Candaele

4:07 miler, all-CIF quarterback in late '80s.

Man among boys.

Candaele was a beast. 4:06 (1600) and 1:50 (800) in 1989 or 1990. Don't remember how the career went at University of Oregon. His wife

Karen Hecox was a tremendous runner in high school and college at UCLA.

I believe he is a high school football and track coach at Vista Murrieta High School in SoCal. Vista Murrieta boys won the 2010 Nike Track Nationals.

Indiana State Champion in '95, Chad McFarland, played football until his junior year. Won the title his senior year. Dude had some guns. Ran low 15s.

Alan

yeah but what if athletic abilities are closely correlated, such that it makes more sense to talk about generally athletic people than to talk about execlusively fast people (whom you would claim would find their niche in track) or exclusively strong people (whom you would claim would find their niche in football). this is not an unreasonable thesis, and even though it remains unproven, it's still likelier than the opposite, which is that athletic abilities are negatively correlated.

if so, it would take but a small preference for football for it to be the case that most high-achieving football players would make track stars, thus, there are loads of undeveloped talent out there, thus, even if a school has a record of 4:25 it might well have a kid each year who could do 4:20.

whatever you said about track being #2 most participated in sport, carries little relevance to what kinds of kids are participating.

PE mile barely shows talent, some people have no innate endurance but respond great to training. I ran 7:00 in PE and my brother ran 5:40 (both with no training), and now my 5k pr is 4 minutes faster than his.

sdfsd wrote:

yeah but what if athletic abilities are closely correlated..... this is not an unreasonable thesis, and even though it remains unproven, it's still likelier than the opposite, which is that athletic abilities are negatively correlated.

You started off down the wrong path, but redeemed yourself at the end by suggesting the actual truth of the matter. Generally, athletic abilities such as strength/power/explosiveness (which might attract football players) are normally negatively correlated with other types of athletic abilities such as pure endurance (name me ONE person who has ever been truly world class in both a pure power/speed event, and a pure endurance event). Not to mention that the body types that excel in different types of sports are usually very different (though of course people can to an extent change their body type). Thus, the odds of people being great (not just good) at both types (power/speed/strength or endurance) of sports are very low.

So I agree with the other guy. There certainly is not a "4:20 talent" at every school in the country (I don't know if you realize how many HS in the country there are by the way). Of course this can't be proven either way. But I find it a bit amusing that whenever some extremely, EXTREMELY rare occurrence such as this kid from the article emerges, and changes sports from football to running, and really excels at it, some people immediately say: 'yeah, we can turn 1/2 the football player in american into great runners if they just did the training.' No. The reason this guy stand out is he very unusual. Guys like this are the exception that proves the rule.

the great distance talents hidden in other sports would not be the most explosive athletes on some teams, but they would be some of the fastest sprinters and best jumpers on their teams, because a great distance talent is going to be capable of 47 to 49 sec quarters (a few even better), with training.

jjjjjjjjjjj wrote:

the great distance talents hidden in other sports would not be the most explosive athletes on some teams, but they would be some of the fastest sprinters and best jumpers on their teams, because a great distance talent is going to be capable of 47 to 49 sec quarters (a few even better), with training.

I think that is wrong.

A) "explosive athlete" and "fastest sprinters/best jumpers" are usually correlated strongly, but you are acting like they are two different things

B) 99.99% of the best distance runners in the world are not capable of better than 49 flat for an open 400. Yes, the best all-time MID-distance 800 type guys can go 46/47. But they are not "distance" guys (5k and up). (and yes, someone like Alan Webb is a very rare exception)

B) this kid we are talking about is clearly a HUGE distance talent, but yet I guarantee you that he was not the "fastest sprinter" on his football team, because even when he was running track, back when he had more of a 400m runner's build, and probably worked on his speed and sprinting more, he was only running about 53 seconds for the 400 (see below), which isn't even that impressive. Distance talents won't usually be the fastest sprinters in any group of individuals (though of course there are the one in a million Alan Webb types, who still wouldn't be nearly as fast as the best sprinters on his football team I am sure, but who was/is of course extremely quick over 400).

Also, as truly remarkable as this kid's story is, we should realizes that he did not just decide to drop football one day, and then became a runner overnight. He has been running tack since at least 2008. His past results sort of prove my point too: he is not a great sprinter/explosive runner. Even when training for 400/800, and probably working on his speed a lot (and already showing distance potential with an eventual 1:58 800), he could only muster 53 400's most of the time. Not bad, but his endurance ability is clearly much, much better than his 400 ability. His 400 ability is dime-a-dozen, while 5k ability could be one in a million just about.

past results below

Good points. This kid (Forrest Lyerly) seems to be more of a distance talent (like a Chris Solinsky) versus a middle distance guy. The aerobic ability looks to be his strength.

i didn't mean abilities per se, i meant potential. i do believe that potential for athletic abilities are highly correlated, even if the abilities themselves are not. especially when we're not talking about the high end (super-elite runner or football player), merely the jock who has the potential to either run 4:20 or play varsity football.

The guy that runs the fastest timed mile in PE class might not be the best talent. He might be the best "trained". The question is how many Jim Ryuns are out there who run a 5:30 or so in that timed mile (good but not crazy for a sophomore) but who are super responders to training and are running 4:10s after a year of training.I am guessing that less than 1/4 people do track. That is a lot of talent out there that never tries. And there is even more talent that gets crappy coaching (i.e the 4:35 guy that is running 20 mpw).