I want to make three points: 1) this is a guy who ran sub-4 as a junior and broke Rupp's 5000m record, so he is among the best ever no matter how you measure it; 2) he's only in the top third in age for his class; and 3) this is a big and important goal with a key precedent for European record-chasing.
Guys like German are unusually young in graduating high school. The cut-off for kindergarten in most states is September 1, so you find four months of kids, or roughly 1/3 if birthdays are evenly distributed of kids in any given high school class, not counting people skipped or started a year late (roughly 10% of boys nowadays are delayed a year), turn 18 during what would be their first semester of college. That would put roughly 1/4 of his class as older than him with a December birthday (more with the proviso I mentioned).
The guy who held the record before him, Galen Rupp, ran that 13:37 in Europe in the summer. He was Nike-Salazar-coached, and the guy who broke his own record was coached by a Nike-sponsored UCLA coach, so it's not as if he's the one with the privilege here. His online postings suggest that he has a one-sided grudge against the Youngs for ... what? ... having lots of online presence, but it's totally fair for him to try this. High school records are significant and the next records, U20, collegiate, national, and world are much harder and less likely to attain for these guys. So, this is his chance. As far as his college career, he should already have taken a break and started up easy running to prepare for freshman xc, but then who is to say that as a Jerry-athlete he wouldn't be redshirted as a freshman anyway? It happened to Withrow when he would have brought Wisconsin a national xc championship and it happened to a sub-4 guy (now 3:38) in Reinhardt Harrison this year.
