I think this would be a fair point if he didn't run f*cking 1:50 after getting injured running under a mid-distance coach. I don't think being tall and muscular at 18/19 means you'll never improve.
I never said that "being tall and muscular at 18/19 means you'll never improve."
What I was trying to convey is that the kid that looks age-appropriate in high school more than likely has more room to improve and historically has had a higher top-end. Flatt looked like a grown man when he was in high school.
People on the board have been saying this about Flatt for years, but it's not really relevant because he's too young to be talking about what his potential is. If he's 24 and his PR is like 1:45, then you can say he peaked early. His issues in college so far are not due to rapidly aging so his age and "maturity" are all pretty moot points currently.
The other Ole Miss kid in that heat ran 1:58 for last place even though he's run 1:49 in college and 1:51 in high school.
It's either college life catching up with them or a major coaching problem.
I'm surprised I never hear coaching brought up around this. Cade has a big personality so it makes sense that most associate any problems with just him, but in every other situation I think the coach would be taking a lot of heat on this. It's hard to fumble a 1:46 guy this much
It's the fault of the athlete. A coach has no control over the personal life of an athlete, or the athlete's mentality. He is not living up his self-inflated ego ... changing college or dropping out loom on the horizon (aka "going pro").
I never said that "being tall and muscular at 18/19 means you'll never improve."
What I was trying to convey is that the kid that looks age-appropriate in high school more than likely has more room to improve and historically has had a higher top-end. Flatt looked like a grown man when he was in high school.
People on the board have been saying this about Flatt for years, but it's not really relevant because he's too young to be talking about what his potential is. If he's 24 and his PR is like 1:45, then you can say he peaked early. His issues in college so far are not due to rapidly aging so his age and "maturity" are all pretty moot points currently.
Im sure all the people who said Webb would peak early in high school because he was too jacked felt pretty silly.
Was somehow much more muscular in high school but now isn't (which means he's weirdly going in the opposite direction from the natural progression of 99.9% of other young men during late teenage years) AND was somehow freakishly fast (we're talking 1:46 fast) off of basically not much training. Oh and all of this was happening in a small, rural area of (Kentucky?) which means coaching of local high school caliber. BUT NOW he's at a D1 program with collegiate level coaching, but is smaller and slower and everyone thinks it's... the coach?
Was somehow much more muscular in high school but now isn't (which means he's weirdly going in the opposite direction from the natural progression of 99.9% of other young men during late teenage years) AND was somehow freakishly fast (we're talking 1:46 fast) off of basically not much training. Oh and all of this was happening in a small, rural area of (Kentucky?) which means coaching of local high school caliber. BUT NOW he's at a D1 program with collegiate level coaching, but is smaller and slower and everyone thinks it's... the coach?
Cade needs to transfer to Florida and split time with the pure 400 guys and the 800 guys. And also put the muscle back on. Ole Miss tried to turn him into a distance guy when he’s not. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
I never said that "being tall and muscular at 18/19 means you'll never improve."
What I was trying to convey is that the kid that looks age-appropriate in high school more than likely has more room to improve and historically has had a higher top-end. Flatt looked like a grown man when he was in high school.
People on the board have been saying this about Flatt for years, but it's not really relevant because he's too young to be talking about what his potential is. If he's 24 and his PR is like 1:45, then you can say he peaked early. His issues in college so far are not due to rapidly aging so his age and "maturity" are all pretty moot points currently.
Yeah if he was running 1:47/1:48 we can talk about him being maxed out. Running 1:54 means something is messed up in training/life. And sure a 1:46 guys doesn’t have much room to improve. But they only need a couple seconds. It is hard to imagine many people are maxed out on 4 years of HS training..
Flatt falls in line with a theory that I have about high school phenoms that cannot perform in college.
College running is about following a process of development and dues paying. It's a lot of hard work in the shadows designed to elicit your best potential during your junior or senior year. For athletes like Flatt and some of the "can't miss" guys from Newbury Park, Great Oak, CBA, etc., they are so motivated by being the #1 guy that they can't wrap their heads around dropping back to JV status at the NCAA level. They love the extrinsic motivation of awards, accolades, and winning. Trusting a process is boring and doesn't give them the validation that they are used to. As someone said, the talent is still there. The mindset is what's lacking. What most people label as burnout or overreaching in high school, I think is simply a lack of motivation because the athlete doesn't find the sport fun any longer. Winning is fun. Getting kudos in the press and on social media is fun. Being pack fodder for a year or two in college is not fun. Some athletes never recover from that and just mail it in to stay on scholarship.
Flatt falls in line with a theory that I have about high school phenoms that cannot perform in college.
College running is about following a process of development and dues paying. It's a lot of hard work in the shadows designed to elicit your best potential during your junior or senior year. For athletes like Flatt and some of the "can't miss" guys from Newbury Park, Great Oak, CBA, etc., they are so motivated by being the #1 guy that they can't wrap their heads around dropping back to JV status at the NCAA level. They love the extrinsic motivation of awards, accolades, and winning. Trusting a process is boring and doesn't give them the validation that they are used to. As someone said, the talent is still there. The mindset is what's lacking. What most people label as burnout or overreaching in high school, I think is simply a lack of motivation because the athlete doesn't find the sport fun any longer. Winning is fun. Getting kudos in the press and on social media is fun. Being pack fodder for a year or two in college is not fun. Some athletes never recover from that and just mail it in to stay on scholarship.
The same holds true for academic "phenoms" to a lesser degree. My neighbor was one year behind me ... she graduated as valedictorian in a class of nearly 1000 – straight "A"s her entire K-12. She imploded in college ... a 2.5 GPA her first and only year. Dropped out and gave up on her dreams become reality.
Has he really fallen of the face of the earth with the 800? Didn't he just run a 1:17 600? Not saying that's earth shattering, but that's far from a time for him to say throw in the towel.
I think he needs a hard reset. Just accept he isn't in HS anymore, build some sort of a base and simple goals, achieve them and take it from there. He jumped into a race with a guy that won gold and was close to breaking the 1000m record. Not putting him or his coach down, but he isn't ready for that now. Not that he never will or could, but the guy needs baby steps now. He is still young.
His attitude coupled with his incredibly sharp decline in college honesty leads me to believe that he actually was doping in high school
I don’t believe that he was doping. As someone else mentioned, some just peak in high school. His best days are probably in the past. He looked like a grown man already when he was in high school. Normally those that are physically mature that early don’t have a high top end.
I think the next logical move for anyone who's peaked on the track is to hit the roads and move up to the marathon. With his speed I think he could do pretty well
Could be he's going out partying a ton in college and that's drastically affecting his training and results.
Could definitely also be the coaching. There's plenty of times when someone comes out of HS all good and then switching coaches in college and the training just doesn't work for them. Or even where they just need a reset in their training. When I was a senior in college we had a freshman girl who was real good in HS and she way underperformed her entire year as a freshman. I then trained her over the summer - nothing special, just the basics, but building up her endurance and strength - and she came into xc her sophomore year straight from the start of the season destroying anything she'd done freshman year. She just needed a reset and to focus on basics.
I have no idea how Flatt's training has changed but if his issue isn't injuries, it's probably a combo of college life and training changes. And he does look thinner now...maybe he's way better at say a 3000m than he would have been in HS but that ain't doing nothing for his 800. If he trained as a 4/8 guy in HS and that was what he excels off of, and is now is being trained by a 8/15/3k focused coach (which people seems to be implying here), that could be a lot of it right there. If he's also out partying and staying up late that could be the rest. Anyway, he's a 1:46 HS runner, it's up to him to make some decisions and figure it out.
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