Well, it's not like these kids are going to spontaneously organize their own track & field meets. Some adults are needed to care enough to be coaches and organize this stuff. If there wasn't a community of adults interested in this, there would be no sport.
Though maybe OP doesn't mean that, but instead is referring to adults obsessing over the personal instragram pages of 13-year-old female runners. In that case, yes, that is weird.
It is normal to follow boys in football and basketball. Those guys are the best athletes in the top sports and hundreds of them will be professionals. It is not normal to follow 16 year old female runners because they are not the most elite ahtletes as compared to boys and nearly none will become a professional distance runner because only a dozen or so Americans scrape by making a living doing it. Tuohy aged up so it is sort of okay now that she is 20. But taking on her name is the most inappropriate thing I have seen on this website because she was underage at the time and the poster is neither her nor her father.
The OP is asking the question because of a post I made yesterday. It does get CREEPY as hell sometimes and the truth is it is a bit strange to be grown man talking about high school kids, especially as if you have a horse in the race. If you disagree, then that speaks volumes.
Id have to say that there isnt enough old timers here to remind others that while great performances are still occuring, they always have been and always will be.
How many young people on here will still be interested in the sport 30 years from now and be willing to share their perspectives/wisdom? Will they be able to stay interested enough to stay involved in more than just a participant/spectator role? Coaches, officials, meet organizers, marketing, broadcasting, writers, photographers, agents, equipment/implement engineers, health care and on and on are all part of the infrastructure to keep those performances moving forward.
It is a niche sport compared to others but it has such a rich history. As a coach, it has always been a goal to educate and help others pursue an interest in helping the next generation advance. Watching former athletes compete at the highest levels is rewarding but not as much as watching them build strong programs and coaching the next generation at the highest levels they are involved in.
Even moreso, visiting with them at big meets and reminiscing about all the fun stuff we did besides train and compete and how they use that and have created other methods to reach and connect with younger kids. Watching Coach Holloway, Florida, having to struggle with Fahnbuleh during the trophy presentation on live tv is a reality check that its not always what it appears but the struggle is still very rewarding.
Or, How many will become the despised hobbyjoggers that just write about their fake career/income/mate fantasies from their couch to get any kind of attention?
Yes, there will be creeps on the internet. But some of them are at practices and in the stands. Since the OP is so concerned, maybe theres a spot in the SafeSport office that could use some help. Otherwise, be a vigilant observer and call it out when you see it. Otherwise you are part of the problem.
I assumed the impetus of this thread to be some high school kid raging about the fact that adults were insinuating that all of the recent high school sub-4 miles were due to the super shoes.
I assumed the impetus of this thread to be some high school kid raging about the fact that adults were insinuating that all of the recent high school sub-4 miles were due to the super shoes.
Yeah but it is because he read a post I made yesterday saying it is silly for a grown man to be debating who is a better HS runner between two guys who are almost the same.
Do other sports have forums of grown men talking about high schoolers? Kinda odd to me.
Since 50+ year olds are the ones who likely have children that compete in high school *and* they are also the age of high school coaches, No, it’s not odd.
Wrong, it would be FUKKING WEIRD if my dad OR my high school coach had spent time chatting about other high schoolers on an internet message board. Since when are little league/helicopter parents normal or healthy?
Shut down because now it's not "woke" to talk about high school sports and anyone doing so needs to be canceled.
And thus, in the year of our lord 2022, Letsrun was canceled.
Nobody is canceling anything. Some of us think certain behavior is ridiculous at times. So what? Grow a pair and be ridiculous. Nobody is stopping you.
I don't know how you can look at it through that lens with any wisdom and not see their rabid interest as somehow insipid and sad. Barbara Hershey's character lays down the law to the coach that grounds her treatment of and concern for Jimmy.
I don't understand why Americans get so hung up on age and insist on dividing ourselves into age based silos. There's really nothing inherently abnormal about people of all different ages taking an interest in each other, or even interacting with each other.
Generational apartheid - just one of the many gifts of cultural marxism.
And we wonder why millenials are such imbeciles. Probably the fact that they were the first generation never allowed to mix with anybody older than themselves is part of the answer.
What generation are you? I’m 39 so a millennial and I have no idea wtf you’re talking about our generation not mixing with older people. You’re either 16 or 85 you’re so out of touch.
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