Girls High School Cross Country - Slower as you age

I mostly agree with you but sometimes that individualization needs to not raise the work level during that period but keep it the same or lessen it. I think continuing to train is important and strength training and covering all your bases is the best bet. Have to watch the iron levels too. They can be all over the place.

Growth Curve wrote:

So, what I've noticed as a general problem with many (not all) high school programs is the lack of progression over the four years of an athlete's high school career. .

This is the case with my daughter's school. She's a freshman running the varsity program. I don't see how she will improve if she does the same training for the next 4 years. Speaking of my own training, I would never plan to do the same thing year after year, without a progression, and expect to improve. I haven't figured out how to address this yet for her.

I'm a high school runner and as an junior I've seen a lot of my friends on our girl's team start off with very strong freshman and sophomore years. But this year, most of them have dropped off the Varsity team and are struggling to run times comparable to their underclass PR's. This is not the case with every girl on the team though. 6 of our 7 girl's varsity runners are seniors. Many girls will start off being great their first year or two, but as they mature, some get slower. However, I've noticed that the 6 senior varsity girls, and the ones that have preceded them in years past, have been the hardest workers. They are the ones who show up to not only our 6 practices a week, but also our optional weight and yoga sessions. Not all hope is lost for your daughter, she won't necessarily be slower, but I guarantee she will be if she's not willing to put the work in.

automaticslim wrote:

One of my students and I looked through the top 100 or so male and female seniors in the 3200 from 2016 using MileSplit, then tracked their results back through their HS careers. We didn't finish the analysis, but the preliminary findings suggested that male runners tended to progress pretty steadily through the four years of HS while female runners were all over the place. This suggested that puberty hits girls in different ways and at different points during that age range..

You can't cherry-pick the top 100 athletes from a group and then generalize your findings as representative for the total population.

try again wrote:

You can't cherry-pick the top 100 athletes from a group and then generalize your findings as representative for the total population.

I wouldn't say a sample size of 100 constitutes "cherry-picking" - when the goal is to analyze competitive high school runners.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the cross country results of my home state, to see what the trends were. I looked at the results of the largest class and the smallest class, and counted how many top ten finishes there were in a five year period. Here is what I found:

Boys

Senior: 54

Junior: 28

Sophomore: 14

Freshmen: 4

Girls

Senior: 32

Junior: 29

Sophomore: 19

Freshmen: 20

The most notable difference between the classes was that no freshmen finished in the top ten in the large school class for boys.

This obviously doesn't track individual athletes to see how each one developed, but there are some clear trends when looking at places.

runthecountry wrote:

try again wrote:

You can't cherry-pick the top 100 athletes from a group and then generalize your findings as representative for the total population.

I wouldn't say a sample size of 100 constitutes "cherry-picking" - when the goal is to analyze competitive high school runners.

The size of the sample isn't the issue - its the fact that it isn't a representative (random) selection of all runners. You are only looking at the outliers on one end of the bell curve and trying to draw conclusions about the whole population.

It may not be comfortable to talk about these things with the girls, but you definitely have to. That's your job as a coach. An open dialogue and giving them someone they can talk to when they struggle is huge for continuing to persevere through a lull in improvement.

Or at least that's what I've found in my own coaching.

Male Coach2 wrote:

It may not be comfortable to talk about these things with the girls, but you definitely have to. That's your job as a coach. An open dialogue and giving them someone they can talk to when they struggle is huge for continuing to persevere through a lull in improvement.

Or at least that's what I've found in my own coaching.

I agree. I bet some in the "Coaches shouldn't run with athletes" and "Coaches shouldn't text athletes" threads would think you absolutely can't talk about these things with kids or parents.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

It's not super difficult at all, unless chasing PRs is all you care about. No matter what you do in life, you have to find meaning beyond constantly getting better.

While I absolutely agree with everything you posted, some kids are not wired like that.

In our house, the parental response was, "This is getting too difficult.. " Remember, this is a kid that is driven by the PRs. "Let's find something different. Life is too short. Let's get some joy back." Which de-escalated things pretty well and then reset goals.

Keeping it real, there are times when it's just not meant to be. As a coach, I've never experienced the "just not meant to be" scenario. I have seen many young girls struggle with puberty for a year or 2, but the ones who stuck with it, things eventfully turned around. Turning around didn't always involve achieving anything near what they projected after a successful freshmen year. I guess an extreme scenario like being the top athlete on your XC team as a freshman and then not being able to score the following year knowing you are trying as hard as you can; this perhaps might be too much misery for a kid. I know parents of young gymnasts who could do back flips on a balance bean and year later they can barely walk the length of a balance bean without falling off. Sometimes a body grows in ways that's no longer conducive to the balance beam no matter hard you try. I am not saying this does not happen, but what I have also seen is parents who are hurt by their kid's lack of success more than the kid. Some new-age parents are too quick to step in when they see their kids struggle at anything. After being rec league and middle school star, I failed to make my H.S. basketball team after 3 attempts. The only rescue I got from my parents was to work harder and give it another try next year. At least in XC/Track, you usually don't get cut and still get to participate. I know it is difficult watching the ones we love struggle; however, struggling at some point at something is training for life.

With all of that said, no parent likes to see their child miserable and perhaps sometimes its best to move on to something that's more fun. (I get that)

I have been a cross country coach since the 1970s. It is true that some girls run their best as frosh. These girls hadn't reached the level of physical maturity that most of their classmates had as frosh. I have seen girls place at the state level as 14 and 15 year olds and never reach those performances again.

However, most girls do not go through such great changes. In my experience most have reached their maturity as 14 and 15 year olds. The changes henceforth are not as vast. As a result the vast majority improved throughout high school.

In one case I saw a girl win a state championship as a frosh. Her body did gain much mass, but she continued to improve. As a senior she was among the best milers in the country. She continued to improve throughout college even making All American D-1 in xc. A year or so after college she made the U.S. Olympic team. And a year later had a personal best in the 800.

Blanket statement about frosh not improving should not be accepted. The team which I coached for many years saw very few girls not improve throughout their high school career.

Its all about strength to weight ratio. Girls get weaker in this way by weight gain due to maturation that strength cannot keep up with.

Boys are the opposite. Testosterone is a wonderful thing. Estrogen not so much.

A girl matures and gains weight.....get them in the weightroom and improive strength.

I have had girls get faster, girls get slower, and girls stay the same. But, I've also had the same with boys. To say that the vast majority of girls get slower is utterly foolish - If i had to put a number on it I'd say that 70% of girls get faster if they stick around 4 years. 20% stay roughly the same and 10% get slower. This is 20 years of XC coaching talking and watching a girl go from 21's her first race as a freshman to 17:48 as a senior.[quote]Hmmm..... wrote:

It's not universal, but common. In my state the fastes girl is almost never a senior and whatever girl is the fastest usually slows down by senior year. It's not universal, but it happens a lot.

Why? I think oftentimes young girls with talent get ramped up training and intensity and there's nowhere to really go.

I've got a girl that went to state in XC/indoor/outdoor as a 7th grader and in trying to make sure she develops right. She runs on the side really, as softball is her main sport. She's a much better runner but her family has invested a lot into softball so there's not much chance she gives it up.

I was fastest in XC my freshman year, and got slower every season, yet in track I was slowest freshman year and fastest senior year. I didn't have the build for XC; I grew into a woman. Doesn't mean I still didn't work my ass off tho

Hmmm..... wrote:

My daughter is a freshman runner on her highschool cross country team. She has some talent and finished her first two races as the second runner on her team in both races.

A lot of the upperclassmen are telling her to enjoy it while it lasts because they all got slower as they got older and it will happen to her too. Is this just the blabbering of jealous upperclassmen getting beat by a freshman, or do girls generally get slower as they mature?

Dear Dad

Those senior girls are correct

It's called puberty many girls do get slower due to body changes. That's why you all should never get excited bout kids like Grace Ping et al as they rarely keep improving.

In fact a study was done recently looking at the NXN participants over the years. Interesting to note that more freshmen finish in the Top 100 than seniors. It then went on to measure those freshmen in the Top 100 again as seniors and see where they placed.

Result.....the majority of those still running placed lower (aka worse) than they did as freshmen and the largest percentage were no longer competing as seniors.

So Dad just relax and prepare your daughter for the likelihood that she will suffer setbacks as she ages. At the end of the day a woman can not fight genetics and she may eventually end up having a body type that is not suited for longer distance running.

Not if it's good wrote:

It isn't just genetics. It can be coaching and mental care if things aren't always on the upswing. In good programs, the majority of girls continue to improve.

Completely wrong. All the coaching and training in the world will not over come genetics. A short, busty, hippy girl will never be a decent competitive runner even if she had the worlds best coach.

Coach G wrote:

Not if it's good wrote:

It isn't just genetics. It can be coaching and mental care if things aren't always on the upswing. In good programs, the majority of girls continue to improve.

Completely wrong. All the coaching and training in the world will not over come genetics. A short, busty, hippy girl will never be a decent competitive runner even if she had the worlds best coach.

That's not the question. The debate and most of this conversation has been whether that girl can be better at 17 than at 13. The consensus among this thread is that in most cases if they are able to stay positive and keep working hard(which obviously isn't a sure thing) then they can get faster. I do think there are severe cases where the body changes are too much to overcome.

I didn't even know those threads were a thing. I guess I don't spend enough time on these message boards, but at times I've definitely texted athletes and run with them, if it's been what that athlete needs at that time.

In my state last year. The top 25 in 3 XC classes looked like this:

Boys

Sr 44

Jr 23

So 7

Fr 1

Girls

Sr 26

Jr 19

So 17

Fr 13

Based on this psuedo-scientific method the improvement curve for boys is well defined and increases unambiguously with age. The improvement curve for girls is there, but not nearly as well defined.