Why do the MAJORITY of sprinters get slower in college?

SMTC wrote:

1. Women. Guys get to college and meet girls of all sizes and races and lose their minds.

2. Their genetic makeup doesn't fit the coaches program.

3. They grew up hungry and go nuts with an all you can eat cafeteria card.

4. Their coach sucks. Lots of good coaches get distracted. Example: Bobby Petrino.

5. They were on peds and scared of college drug tests. Example: Tony Mandarich

Tony Mandarich??? WTF?

lease wrote:

Simple fact: Of the totality of men and women who do any sprinting in college, a majority (i.e. more than half) will not match their best times from high school. I'm thinking here most particularly of times in the 100 and 200.

Fact?

Yes, fact.

I'm sorry that I don't have the source anymore, but surveys were done some years back and, of those who compete in t&f in college, only something around 30% compete for four years...that is, about 70% compete for less than four years, and of that 70% about half do not last past a single year.

[Of course, this does not deal with the fact that the great majority of high school t&f athletes, something over 90%, do not participate in any intercollegiate sports.]

Now, students cut their college competitive careers short for a variety (and combinations) of reasons. But it is certainly true that one disincentive for continuing is a perceived lack of progress. Once you get to college competition, you're probably not winning as much as you did in high school; if you're also not seeing your times improve, motivation can be a real challenge.

And, in any case, those who only train and race for a year or two frequently do not improve on their high school times, if only for the "adjustment" reasons that I (and others) posted above.

Naturally, the sprinters *that we hear of* tend to be the ones who're successful at the college level--and almost all, particularly among the men, will have to be running lifetime bests to have that college success. We simply hear about very few of the many good HS sprinters who fall by the wayside in college.

My statement stands: Of the totality of men and women who do any sprinting in college, a majority (i.e. more than half) will not match their best times from high school.

coach d wrote:

For the record:

There were 41 people in NCAA D1 that ran 10.30 or faster last season.

The were 4 people in high school that ran that fast wind-legal.

There were 151 people in D1 that ran 10.50 or faster.

I think it's likely that those people ran faster in college than they did in high school, and so many of them that very few have any chance of a pro contract.

And a bunch of people above like Lease running their "mouths" off have no idea what they're talking about.

I was going to say coach d's stat ends the thread, most of them improve. But consider this made-up scenario:

Let's say 50 incoming freshman have run under 10.50 and 1000 of them have run under 11.00. Now, let's say only 40% of all runners actually improve regardless of ability, and lets say of those 10.50-11.00 20% of them improve to the point where they're under 10.50

Thus, even though 60% of runners got worse, we now have at least 220 who are sub-10.50, despite only 50 coming in.

If you look at the top HS milers in the USA of all time, many of them didn't improve their PBs - Danielson didn't, Verzbicas didn't, Lindgren didn't, Hall didn't (some went to longer distances obviously)...

So in conclusion:

1. I could believe that most runners get worse despite that there are more runners under any certain benchmark

2. Most of the "reasons" are still shit. No, the reason has nothing to do with sprinters suddenly liking football and partying. The reason seems pretty simple - the faster you've already run, the harder it is to improve.

If you suck, you can improve with very little effort. But if you've already achieved a high level (as most college sprinters have), it takes a lot of work just to stay at that level, let alone improve, and even the slightest setback can halt your improvement.

I bet one reason is that most high school sprinters are playing football or soccer in the fall. They are training all summer for that and then are practicing football or soccer every day from mid August until November when indoor track starts.

In college, at least at the D3 level, they might not start fall track practice until October. Then they practice for 4-6 weeks and then go home for 4 weeks where they probably don't have access to an indoor track and have to work out on their own.

Basically in high school sprinters are working out with a coach and team from August until June. In College its 6 weeks in the fall. Then mid January till May.

i think teams would be training a bit more than that...

1. Drugs: No real testing in HS.

2. Discipline: LaShawn and Preshus no longer have a crazy mom making sure they are in their own bed by 10:00pm every school night.

3. Mental Expansion: After 4+ years of training the honeymoon period is definitely over and they just get burnt out.

4. Fat: Sprinters are even worse than distance runners, but just barely, when it comes to thinking they can eat whatever they want.

do they or are the distrateced

Alright—how many DISTANCE runners get slower in college? I knew quite a few. Had a 9:10 guy from my HS run several years for a major DI program and never run a 3k equivalent to his 3200. Another 9:20 guy, same thing.

I'm a middle-distance guy who got slower in college. I blame it on having a worse coach (more focused on long, slow distance than the "quality" training we did in HS), more demand from school work, less regular race schedule, and eventually a drop in my personal motivation driven by the prior factors I just mentioned. That and as a prior poster mentioned, I probably got 98% of my potential out of me by the end of HS anyway so there just wasn't much room for improvement while there was plenty of room for regression if I didn't keep up the high-level of potential extraction I got from myself in HS.

Most hs sprinters succeed in light of their coaches. Still true most don't amount to much at the next level

Kapil wrote:

Why does it seem the vast majority of fast high school sprinters decline in college? For example, UCLA had a guy go from 10.29 the year before attending LA, then run 10.69 after a year in the program. Then they had a freshman go from a 10.61 hs senior to a 10.88 freshman and then a 10.9 sophomore. Every sprint athlete at Cal seems to get slower. It seems like only a few schools (Baylor, South Carolina) can get their sprinters to be faster in college. Why is this?

False. The majority do not get slower, they get faster. Besides a few sprinters at UCLA and Cal that you mentioned, that is a complete false statement.