The Newbury Park kids aren't THAT talented

Where do the other 99% go? Were you home schooled and never around HS athletes?

6% of HS boys run track. His math just doesn't work.

To be honest.... I didn't even read the post. To suggest the NBP guys aren't talented is just stupid and doesn't warrant the time.

It's NP not NBP

Newbury Park is two words. 1. Newbury 2.Park = NP

Yes, but that poster was placing emphasis on natural speed seemingly in the context of who could win a short footrace. That sort of natural speed doesn't point to a bunch of potential sub-4 milers that just aren't doing track. Track isn't swimming or tennis where I think you could really argue there could be millions of of people not participating who could be elite. Most people who are truly elite talent-wise, give it a crack at some point.

In a few years we will know how talented they are and how great their coach is.

IMHO it is extremely likely these 4 are All American D1 runners or better. It is also extremely likely that NP / Brosnan never replicates anything close to this success. He is likely a great coach who happened to get a boatload of exceptional talent.

Time will tell.

Well, this is unprecedented success no doubt, but I think NP will remain a really good and often nationally relevant team. As long as high schoolers of a talent-laden and youth track-heavy region can keep coming through they're going to be really good in his program. Not 4 of the top 10 guys in the country good, but having a sub 9 or sub 410 guy most years and a lot of sub 4:20 and sub 920 guys every year sure...

I looked this up for a response but didn't add it because I thought it didn't really fit in with the rest of it. World Athletics says there have been 170 sub 3:33 performers, which is equivalent to a sub 3:50.

Like I said earlier, the 97th percentile or whatever may be too low. Using really rough math though, we have a sample that says ~ 2/13 sub-4 HS guys have the talent to go sub 3:50 in HS (Ryun and Kessler). We have ~ 1 guy go sub-4 every year now. About 5% of HS guys run XC every year, and about that many do distance in track. If 100% of HS guys were doing distance running instead of focusing on whatever they're doing instead (other sports, video games, academics, etc), those numbers get us to 20 sub-4 guys every year and 1 of them sub 3:50.

Think 20 sub-4 guys every year is a crazy number? In 2017 there were 10 guys under 4:05. One of them was under 4, and 3 were at 4:00. If they just had super spikes, we would have seen at least 4 guys sub-4 that year. If all 10 of those guys had more training under their belt (like Ingebrigtsen training from an elementary school age), I think it's pretty likely all 10 of them could have broken 4. Even if a couple didn't, someone who was a bit slower could have broken through with better training (like Nuguse who ran 4:06 that year). Extrapolating out again to 100% of HS kids, that's 200 kids with sub-4 talent in a given year.

The number of kids breaking 3:50 honestly may not even be close to proportional to the number of kids under 4 because it's such a massive jump in ability from 3:59. Like there are a handful of U20s who can break 13, but I don't think it's possible for a U20 to run under 12:40. Similarly, I think there's a lot of high schoolers who could break 4, but the difference in talent between breaking 4 and breaking 3:50 is so massive, and the amount of training you have to do to bring it out is so massive, that it could still just take a generational talent. If you wanna say that there aren't dozens of kids with the genetic ability to break 3:50 under perfect circumstances, that's fine. Regardless of if there are or not, I think there's still hundreds of kids with the genetic ability to break 4 in HS.

Dude, I literally answered your question in the post you responded to. "Almost all of the talent in the US goes to basketball, soccer, football, and a few other sports depending on the place". My high school did an annual 3k, and every year there were 2 soccer players in front of our 5th XC guy. In the 4 years I did it, we won state once and came top 3 the other times. Also, if you wanna answer the question, what % of top talent do you think goes to track/XC?

You are terrible at logic and math. 50% of kids have no talent for any sports. And 99% of kids with talent for the mile end up running it. Shaq can't break 4. Brady can't break 4. Roger Clemens can't break 4. Phil Micklesen can't break 4. The kids that claim are athletes are on average much taller and heavier than runners. Think about how silly your loigc is just in track. Coleman can't run the mile and Ingebrightesen can't run the 100. Crouser can't run a 5k and Centro can't throw the shot. You are giving Brosnan way too much credit making it sound like you could drop him into a random school in Mississipi and he would have multiple guys breaking 9 in a few years. Most high school coahces are all doing similar training to his. Everyone reads books. Everyone has the internet. Everyone attends conferences. Every high school kid duplicates what the Newbury Park kids are doing but 99% of those kids still can't break 4:30.

This was the most based post i ever made lmfao i stand by it. Now that 5 kids broke 4 this year I feel vindicated.

Unfortunately, there are many talented kids who won't go out for the track team.

Many teacher/coaches on this board have stated that there are potential state champs at every HS. I've had many kids who scored 140+ on the pacer test but would never go out for track- basketball or nothing. These 5'10" 135 pound distance build kids would play ball all day without getting tired, possessed good bounce and agility and cut from the bball team or not believed they were destined for the NBA.

I'm not saying they'd be sub 4 but some were certainly more talented than kids I coached who made it to the state championships.

This rings true and echoes what many posters on many threads have pointed out. Most kids don't run. Most - almost all - adults don't either. Where I disagree with the poster is in his first word:

Unfortunately

I think it's fine that there are both potential good runners (the exactly right genetics but have never tried it) and current good runners who don't join the track team. At my school, it didn't seem like any of the distance runners did. I accidentally came across track practice once (the only one I ever witnessed) and there was a guy who could be called a distance runner if you stretched the defintion enough. He ran some 10000s a few years later. Other than that one guy, we ignored it.

My best training partner actually approached the coach Senior year about getting involved and was turned down. Just from his story, I imagine I would have been, too. So it wasn't an attractive option. Maybe if they bring something to the table it would be. Almost all schools don't get or give free shoes. Mine didn't kick down so much as a pair of socks. There was simply no incentive to do it and I may or may not have been welcome if I had tried.

In conclusion, I agree with the many who say there are potential future 10 second 100 runners and 2:10 marathoners walking around any given campus - and they don't end up on any sports team. It may be just me who doesn't consider this to be a problem. I don't really blame the kids who don't show up for track. Instead of asking, "How can we get them to," I would ask, "Why would they?" I didn't.

Most of you are overthinking this with your analysis and numbers.

I think the bottom line is this: With today's shoes, with good coaching, the right races and good luck and situations, there's a lot of kids who could run between 3:58-4:02 every year. How many? At least as many as this year, maybe 5-10 more. With the shoes, maybe 4:03 kids are running 4:01, and 4:01 kids are running 3:59?

Why did no high schoolers break 4:00 between Liquori and Webb? More than 30 years?

The kids that break 4 is because they have been training very seriously since extremely young age. 80% or so of HS athletes start training seriously till right before HS. That’s why you see the immense majority of these HS stars with no significant improvement in college and never made it to a decent running career. It takes several years of uninterrupted training and staying healthy to get to a level that you might have chances to compete as a Pro and after you make it to that level the chances to become a decent Pro athlete are even smaller.

Running sub-4:00 and becoming a pro are two different tiers of athlete.

The Sahlman and Young brothers share the same genetics, so having two (as opposed to four) 99.9 percentilers in the same school could well happen on occasion by rare chance. We are also at a point where breaking 4 is more common nationwide than it was at the turn of the century, so having one in a high school is no longer “historic”.

Actually yes. But only if they all had been active kids eating healthily, and then from age 10-12 onwards started a world class training regimen. Which of course none of them have been close to doing.

Two things:

1. Yes, the Newbury Big 4 ARE that talented.

2. No, thousands of American HSers today CANNOT or WILL NOT ever run sub-4:00 miles, unless widespread genetic modification occurs.

1. You need to think of the Sahlmans and Youngs more as pre-eminent 2-milers and 5K runners first, milers second. That's where their collective and individual talent really shines historically. Yes, Colin raced the 4th fastest prep mile ever this year, as well as low 1:48 in the 800, but if he had given the same attention to the longer distances this Spring, he could have likely challenged Verzbicas' two-mile record while breaking Rupp's 5K mark. Meanwhile, Aaron ran 8:01.7 indoors (right about an 8:40 two mile)- one of the fastest indoor marks ever and arguably superior to his 4:01 mile outdoors. Meanwhile, Lex ran the 2nd fastest prep 5K ever this Spring in 13:43, and Leo would have arguably finished a second or few ahead had he been healthy and entered in the same race. And Aaron, Lex, and Leo still have a year of HS left.

All that on the reported 60-65 mile regimen Brosnan has these kids on. Yes, I'd say their core four (plus Nico) are that talented individually.

2. Peach Pit, we've covered the mile question already in my previous post on the topic. No, there isn't a single '4-minute mile' gene on the human DNA strand just waiting to be activated in thousands of American schoolboys if only they were just steered into and properly trained as distance runners for a few years. Multiple nature and nuture factors are necessary for 4-minute mile achievement, including under-valued talents like mental toughness, bio-mechanical efficiency, ability to recover from sustained pounding for months and years on end, ability to focus on a single goal to the exclusion of practically everything else for years, a financially and emotionally supportive household, superior coaching, safe and conducive training places, etc. etc. etc. The odds of all of this happening in conjunction with a remarkable innate talent for stride length + turnover rate are very low...so low that still just a handful have ever accomplished sub-4:00 in the U.S.

Even if you got geometrically more kids in the U.S. to take miling seriously, I doubt if you'd more than double the number of four-minute milers each year. Look at East Africa. Combine Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania and you have about 200 million people. War-torn and economically disadvantaged, no doubt. But talk about a talent base and motivation! Where a single Diamond League 1500 or international marathon win could to a year's salary or much, much more! And how many combined legitimate 18-years and under sub-4:00 (using the 1500 time equivalent) milers do they have? Maybe 30-40? Or how about Japan and its 125 million relatively rabid marathon fans? Maybe 10?

Using your logic, there could be thousands of 26 ft and 52 ft HS long jumpers every year, or 7'3'' high jumpers, if only enough basketballers and footballers were enticed into track and field. Thousands of 20.2 boys 200 guys, or 52.0 400 girls. Thousands of 18' and 14' pole vaulters. But guess what? Having attended an inner city school myself back in the day, just about every baller also gave sprinting and jumping a whirl too, for bragging rights if nothing else. But after a few semesters of P.E. or a few track seasons, those who could pretty much did instead of the reverse.

Perhaps the only factor that will increase the number of HS milers from say 0-2 each year to 5+ is advanced shoe technology. On another recent post, I compared the progression in high school performance (both boys and girls) across every widely contested HS event across the last three decades, using Athletic.net statistics. What became immediately evident was that- while marginal yet uneven progress could be seen in such events as the sprints, little was clearly evident in other events save for the girls pole vault (as it is still a relatively new event). The outliers? The 800s, mile/1600s, and 3200s. The longer event, the more remarkable the progress (I wasn't able to access comprehensive national data prior to 2000, save for California State, but there similar trends also emerge).