Dude wins SC State XC Championship wearing high-top Air Jordan's (great picture)

Until recently, there were not enough class A schools fielding XC teams in SC to hold their own meet; they doubled up with class AA (the girls meet is still A-AA combined). In the 80's it was A-AA-AAA combined. Numbers make a huge difference--these class A schools are contenders if they can average 18 flat. But this is not surprising. Their football teams also average only about 200 lbs on the offensive line, and their power forwards tend to be 6'2" or 6'3". Fast (16-minute) kids are just as rare as big kids. A school with ten times the enrollment is also ten times as likely to have a few.

By the way, the African-American kid (Mark Blackmon) who won the AAAA meet in the 2nd best time of the day is easily the best runner in SC. His sister, Angelina, had a great HS career and ran for NC State. I think she won the indoor 800 at ACC's a couple of years ago.

30 years ago we had a basketball player at our school who would play on the outdoor courts all morning. When it got hot in the afternoon and the others would go home, he would run 5 miles in his chuck taylors. He would be back playing hoops in the evening. Ran a 10:00 2 mile his sophomore year and didn't go out for track his last two years.

Let's say you have a class of sixty, or 240 kids in the school, roughly 120 girls. so, out of 120 boys, you need to fill a, say, 45 man roster for a football team (45/120 is 37.5 percent). But because physical development is an enormous key to football success, and ninth and tenth grade boys aren't nearly physically strong enough to compete with most eleventh and twelfth grade boys, a lot of your team isn't going to be worth much. However, if you have a class of six hundred, you could fill your entire team with seniors while selecting only the 15 percent strongest and fastest boys in the class.

A xc team of 7 would not be difficult to fill in the small school or the big school. You can even get all seniors in the small school, leaving 23 boys in the senior class to fill out the starting offense and defense of the football team, plus a kicker. In both cases, the big schools will have a big advantage, but let's not pretend that the football case isn't much tougher.

horrible subject line wrote:

Why the fuck would you ever use an apostrophe to pluralize?

Why would you use the word "f***" if you have such a great grasp on the English language?

The problem is that you have used up most of the athletic kids get the football team.

Tell that to the Charles Wright Academy (Tacoma,WA) coach who consistently has sub 9:00 2 milers.

the exception that proves the rule

its not the size of the school, its the quality of the program. my graduating class had 68 kids in it. our xc team was #1 ranked Class C school in NY and we placed 10th at the NY federation meet. We sent guys to Tennessee, Wake Forest, UMass and Seton Hall over a 3 year span.

We loved mixing it up with the large schools and beating them most of the time.

i know a 15 yr old from my village who can own them boys on his bare feet

manbearpig wrote:

its not the size of the school, its the quality of the program. my graduating class had 68 kids in it. our xc team was #1 ranked Class C school in NY and we placed 10th at the NY federation meet. We sent guys to Tennessee, Wake Forest, UMass and Seton Hall over a 3 year span.

We loved mixing it up with the large schools and beating them most of the time.

Imagine if your graduating class had 680 kids in it with the same program quality.

He is at the entry level of running and in the easiest class. I would bet a lot of people on this site started out wearing the wrong shoes. I wore basket ball shoes for the first month I was in XC because I didn't know any better, finally my coach took me aside an told me to get some real shoes. I think stories like this actually happen a lot its just people don't really take pictures and post them on the internet for races like this.

Absolutely hilarious. I'm having all my kids run in High Tob Jordans in hope that they win a race and our program gets some press.

retard trap wrote:

He is at the entry level of running and in the easiest class. I would bet a lot of people on this site started out wearing the wrong shoes. I wore basket ball shoes for the first month I was in XC because I didn't know any better, finally my coach took me aside an told me to get some real shoes. I think stories like this actually happen a lot its just people don't really take pictures and post them on the internet for races like this.

Of course there are similar situations all the time, but the point is that he WON THE STATE MEET.

Why is it that everyone has a f***in opinion when it is a black runner??? If he was a white kid in high tops would anyone had said anything about race. White people always say there is no race problem in America but that is only because they are white and don't have to deal with the problem...as bad as this sounds all I can say is "f#%#Kin White People"...

This is the lot of running. All the best runners do not run. We all know crowds of 'undeveloped' 13-14yo studs who go elsewhere. At my own high school I remember a 16yo kid who ran 47.x quarter and gave up sports completely a year later because it 'wasn't his thing'!

This is one of the major arguments against the 'african natural dominance' theory. Ruh-Roh, shouldna said that!

Jason Pedersen wrote:

Of course there are similar situations all the time, but the point is that he WON THE STATE MEET.

First of all they are not high top Jordans as stated in the title they are clearly low tops which don't really differ much from heavy trainers. Secondly if you look at the other pics you will see that a large number of the contestants are not where racing flats either most seem to have on their beat up heavy training shoes. And lastly no he didn't win THE state meet as in he is the best in the state he won the class A meet which is the weakest one. Those schools have like 30 students in the whole school. The guy in class AAAA beat him by 1:13. Plus it was SC a state not exactly know for its distance prowess in the first place. This is like being and NAIA national champion and acting like you accomplished something great.

____________________________________

There is so much wrong with this paragraph, I don't even know where to start. I'm just going to assume you're in the 6th or 7th grade and give you a pass.

So why all the negativity?

o.O wrote:

*cough* 17 flat *cough*

17 flat... IN HIGH TOPS.

The smaller schools aren't lining up 5 slower runners just because there are fewer runners at the school. There is also the fact that in a school with 60 people per class those with running talent will also be some of the better players on the football basketball and baseball teams. So a kid who runs 17 flat isn't running it training year round like you. He's running it training during the season, then he moves on to other things.