How common is it for the fastest runner at a school to not be on the track or XC team?

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays...

My anecdote doesn’t exactly fit the prompt, since the guy I’m thinking of did run track for 4 years, and won state in the 1600 and 3200 his SR year (but he never ran XC). The school he ran for, cross-state rivals of my school, nearly had a distance dynasty during his 4 years (I think they won XC twice, were top-3 the other two years, and won a team track title on the strength of their distance squad).

The guy ran 2:00/4:30 as a freshman and as I said, went on to be 1600/3200 champ, but he preferred to play second-string QB for a mediocre football team instead of having a legitimate shot at the XC individual title our senior year. If he’d run XC for 4 years, he would probably have been on 4 straight state champion teams.

He went on to run track for a mid-major state university, but never really improved on his times. I’m guessing the required passion for running just wasn’t there.

As an aside, I out-kicked him by tenths in the state meet 800 our senior year, and he ran directly up into me after crossing the line so that he stepped on my heel and I crashed to the track and got bloodied as hell. He never even offered an empty apology or a hollow “good race”—seemed like a bit of a prick at the time.

Are you talking about Josh McDougal? He didn't really disappear - there were tons of threads on him here. He got injured and took years to overcome it. When he was finally healthy, he decided to give up the sport very shortly thereafter.

Very true. Kids self select the sports they are best at quite often.

I'd expect soccer (insert other sport if you like) training to improve kids physical conditioning. After a soccer season or whatever, the soccer players should be able to run a faster mile or whatever distance faster than before. But they won't beat the distance runners on any quality program. However, there are lot of very bad programs out there where the athletes aren't even running an hour in total a day - less than 40 mpw, some may do as little as 5 miles a day on average! I'd think there could be plenty of athletes who'd beat the top "star" on this team.

Why did I run XC and track? I ran XC very casually, 20 mpw and skipped cooldowns and weekends. I only ran XC because my dad used to run. I did like it a little bit myself, but I just enjoyed the racing and PRing, I never cared to actually train for it except what I had to do in practice. Senior year I ran right under 17 for 5k. I played lacrosse in the spring so I never did track. We did suicides in lacrosse all the time, about a minute or two in duration each, for about 15 minutes. This is a very good indicator of 800m ability in my estimation. I was about the third or fourth fastest guy in these. The people ahead of me were just better athletes, better at lacrosse, used to beat me in the mile in PE in middle school. They showed up for the team's 3 mile run test and ran 18:00's off of literally not a single step of training, I ran 19:00's. Keep in mind, lacrosse at my school was more popular than most schools, but it still wasnt as popular as football, most of the top athletic talent went to football. Anyway After my last season of lacrosse, I wanted to get into weight lifting and decided that to make it more fun I'll do some strides a few times a week and see if I turn it into a good 400m time. I ended up running 50.5 on my first go. I don't think I had 8:40 talent, but I'm sure I could have ran a dam good 800 if I ever ran track. Anyway, my thesis is, there were for sure about 5 to 6 individuals I know by name who were more aerobically and athletically talented than I, who never ran a step in high school aside from whichever sport they did. One played soccer, two played football and the rest played lacrosse with me.

Yes, distance runners do play football. And they also play lacrosse or any other sport you could name. Bad distance runners, which are the people you normally find on an XC team, don't play football because they don't have the speed to be able to. Good distance runners have plenty of speed.

Any top distance runner you could name is capable of around 50 second all out 400. And that is while they are training for distance. Training for speed and explosiveness they could probably be a lot faster, certainly fast enough to be good at explosive sports like football. Football is only 'not an option' for people who aren't athletically talented, which is why you mistakenly think football is not an option for distance runners.

Adding further anecdotal evidence: my son was one of the fastest, if not the fastest, in his (not so great) HS track team. He quit track to play soccer because it is more fun. A few days ago he told me that there are at least two other players that are way faster than him.

A lot of great athletes who run fast are interested in other sports like lacrosse, soccer, football. I’ve heard from say that they find track and XC boring.

I see it the other way more often. Kids who are not fast gravitate to the other sports, where they can make up for their lack of speed with ball skills or throwing elbows or predicting where the ball is going to go so they can get a head start. Kids get weeded out of track as early as running around on the playground ("hey, I'm not that fast") or doing the 600 in elementary gym class.

Of course every track coach would love to have five football players and five soccer players who aren't doing anything in the spring, and likewise, the football coach wants a lot of those track kids. The point is that they are not doing it. All these stories are about potential, not about the kids who actually get out there and do it. That's why we celebrate the kids who actually do it, instead of those who think they could have done it if they had decided to.

Our goal should be making more opportunities for more kids, in all the sports. I knew a lot of great athletes growing up, but they didn't continue in sports because their family was poor or they didn't have a good mentor to help them along.

Granted this was years ago….

Vince Cartier (4:06.6 HS Indoor mile) had a younger brother that was on the golf team. He would occasionally just hop in and run with the kids on the xc team like it was nothing.

Also our mascot broke the school record in junior high on a cinder track in gym class, no starting blocks at low 10.x 100 yard dash - he told me he just didn’t like to run. I lamented the waste of god given speed - he said “I’d give it to you if I could” I wish that had been possible.

The 1960 Olympic 400m champ Otis Davis and histories first sub 45.00 never ran high school track. He was a basketballer. While at Oregon he saws some track guys working out...................

Although I'm glad Crispy liked what I wrote and we don't really disagree on anything, I'll clear up what could be some misconceptions about what I saw and experienced decades ago.

1. I don't think most of the teenage road racers back then were also doing a season each of XC, indoor, and outdoor track and then adding in roads. My gang certainly wasn't: the roads were the main thing (as they are for a lot of folks with biological profiles suited to 10k and up.) What this means is that we weren't over racing at all. There is a thread about Ritz running 76 races or something like that Senior year. 10% of that would have been a reasonable year for me. I had time to peak a couple times a year and the school wasn't using those up, so to speak.

2. This is sort of a different way of saying the same thing, but we certainly trained to peak and race to our maximum potential. Whether that was perfectly executed is something else, but a March marathon would have been the focal point for the 4 of us that went starting around New Years. My training was definitely planned and structured. That was sort of covered above when I pointed out that we weren't just randomly fun-running in between what we viewed as 'real' training and racing, as many look at school-affiliated running to be. These races with the local stars (2:20 marathoners who won the local 10k well under 30 minutes) and an army of serious amateurs like us WERE the whole point.

3. You don't see kids doing this anymore? Darn right. No truer statement could be made! If you're under 18, or really, 23, you're not allowed, according to the court of public opinion, to race on asphalt. When this changed, I don't know, but if there's a 15-year-old in your local half marathon, it's not during XC or track season and simply finishing wins her/his division. There's also possibly an angry coach; school coaches seem to take interest in kids year-round now (that may or may not be better than before - hard to say in my mind.)

Kind of a bummer that this is the case. Throwers, sprinters, etc. have a competitive outlet with school teams. If you're not decent at any event the school district offers, it might be hard to find success these days - and the life-lessons, self-esteem, and all youth sports gives you as well as fitness. A parent who is pro-distance, pro-road, and willing to drive, like my dad was and parents everywhere are for school-sanctioned sports, could change this, but for most you're just not pursuing any sport.

Not long after college, I got together with a bunch of high school buddies who were all athletic. I was the only distance runner. We played flag football. I ran away from everyone on every pass play, was open by five yards or more, and dropped far more passes than I caught.

We choose the sports we're good at.

My brother as well. 100% more talented than me, but even more importantly, he was in the same grade as our school record holder in the mile, and he was definitely more talented than him as well. They played sports together up until sophmore year when school record holder couldn't make a varsity sport so he focused on track and eventually ran 1:53 and 4:10. I'm sure he would be the first to admit there were plenty of more talented kids than him at his school.

Getting dusted in the mile in middle school by someone who self professedly hated running is a universal experience.