BYU is a joke - Two 24-yr old BYU athletes won 2021 NCAA XC

Lead Foil Hat XXIV wrote:

this is a joke wrote:

I understand they have to take a year off to do their religious stuff but being 24 is a massive advantage in distance running. You are no where near your peak when you are 20-22. What an embarrassment to see two 24 year olds from BYU take the cross titles.

This is dumb; since when did we not consider college runners to be tough full grown men. This is not a middle school race. I think the OP is a joke. I don't even know a single person on the BYU team. The victories are well earned though.

jesus lets simplify. If you make a curve on graph paper, there are outliers, yes. BUT, most distance runners benefit from miles and time to mature beyond just age in years? 26, ON AVERAGE, is an advantage im not wild about. 24 is fair game, she followed all the rules and just turned 24. being a SR tends to be advantageos on average.

lol I love when trolls get owned so hard they don't come back to the thread

Do you believe in science? The age is about 18 because nearly all females are mature at 17 while some males are a year or so later. But 19 is the absolute latest which makes your stupid arguments embarrassing.

AsbelKiprop wrote:

this is a joke wrote:

I understand they have to take a year off to do their religious stuff but being 24 is a massive advantage in distance running. You are no where near your peak when you are 20-22. What an embarrassment to see two 24 year olds from BYU take the cross titles.

So why don't you go take two years completely off of training to do a mission trip in some other country and then come back and see how close you are to your old PR's when you start back running. Too bad you're a coward and won't do it since it would prove you wrong and to be be an idiot.

I took fifteen years off due to injury and came back and ran a bunch of pr's from my age 19/20 last competitive years in college. Sure, it took me a couple years to do it. But these guys aren't coming back from injuries and they are not in their mid to late 30s. The fact is that they do pr by far when they come back and they usually get the extra time to adjust. Mantz, for instance, graduated in 2015, six and a half years ago, did his mission, and did not start at BYU with the clock until 2018, 10th NCAA 29:17, 2019, 3rd 30:40, 2021, 1st-29:26 (and ran a 22:50 8k!)/1st-28:33.

So, he skipped not only 2015 and 2016 xc seasons but also 2017. And after those four great xc seasons, he's still eligible, thanks to COVID, for one more, though he's not taking it. That's how elastic the rules are. There's a reason that xc is dominated by upperclassmen. XC is far more affected by years of aerobic development with the higher mileage and bigger tempos that start in college. And physical maturity, musculature, speed, time management, and emotional maturity is very much emerging. Missions help in physical and emotional maturity, time management skills, and muscle development. You may not be lifting but there are not a lot of 18 year olds at the level of 22-24 year olds. That's why the NFL won't even draft them prior to three years of college, and why the football players add dozens of pounds on before they're ready for the pros. If 18 was fully grown and mature, why would they have such rules? A multi-billion dollar industry knows better than some random message board posters.

I believe in particular, verifiable scientific experiments, carefully interpreted, yes. But I keep looking when I hear claims made that don't pass the sniff test. The average college student adds 12 pounds of weight during college. Distance runners may well have delayed full adolescence. Many boys are still growing at 17-19, but usually not much more than 1-4" over that time frame. However, men hit their peak muscle mass between 20 and 30, and their brain doesn't stop developing until around age 25.

https://www.healthline.com/health/do-guys-keep-growing-until-age-25

galenruppisjacked wrote:

Is Whitni Orton a joke? She didnt serve a mission and is a normal senior like everyone else. Why did she win the title?

The women have won 5 national titles...they aren't serving missions like the men....

Why is that?

That's a false statement. Many LDS women serve on missions (not as many as the men, but many volunteer to go on missions, it's just not viewed as mandatory as it is for the men). This should not count against them. There's nothing stopping you from spending a couple years in the military, peace corps (10% of peace corps volunteers don't have degreees) or a missionary position with another religious group during or before going to college (in fact, it's not a bad idea, as a lot of young kids entering college don't necessarily have a career path, and volunteering or going into the military can help guide that).

There is no "normal" path through college. While typically people go right out of high school, many people choose to go later. They should not be penalized for their approach to an education (in fact many mormons I know are successful doctors, dentists, etc.). College is all about gaining an education, not sports. So, if they view their mission as an essential part of their education experience (not all learning is done in the confines of a classroom), they should not be penalized as you are suggesting.

Rojo seems ok with religious bigotry especially if BYU is part of it.

No one is stopping any athlete from leaving the sport for 18 to 24 months to go serve a volunteer mission, go on a humanitarian trip, or whatever else you cpuld think of to fill your time for that long. Every athlete and coach is free to work it out and decide to give up the sport and school for a couple years. Personally, i think missions lead to a lot of athletes not getting back to where they were before the missions in high school. You either come back way overweight/underweight or at least just super out of shape, you aren't focused on home life when you are out there. you get a more physically mature, but you get extremely out of shape.

Run faster not slower wrote:

They are Christians. They are not a cult. That is the thing that is not factual.

They are not Christian. To be considered Christian hold to Trinitarian Theology which Mormons do not. They worship a false christ and a false lord. Those who deny the Trinity are anathema.

quickishguypc wrote:

Eliud and most kenyans age dope. It's widely accepted he is around 5 years older than his official age.

If Kipchoge is 5 years older than his official age, then he just turned 42. A 41 year old winning the Olympic gold in the marathon may be less plausible than an 18 year old winning the World Championship in the 5000.

this is a joke wrote:

this is an outrage! wrote:

I can't believe that full grown adults are allowed to compete against...other full grown adults. The horror!

Not saying it’s anything horrible. I would just be embarrassed to win a collegiate race at 24. I graduated college a month after turning 22. I would have had to have been a 7th year senior to be 24 during XC.

If you would have taken two years off of training and served a mission or something similar, you would have been 24. Not training for two years usually causes them to lose a year after they get back.

Mantz turns 25 next month.

This is what happens when people get excited about age group stuff. They start to make excuses and whine about stuff like this. It's a college race, he's eligible, he won oh well. Too many little league dads in here

Ostritch wrote:

Run faster not slower wrote:

They are Christians. They are not a cult. That is the thing that is not factual.

They are not Christian. To be considered Christian hold to Trinitarian Theology which Mormons do not. They worship a false christ and a false lord. Those who deny the Trinity are anathema.

Seems like you have confused the term Christian with Trinitarian.

From Britanica's article on Christianity: "At its most basic, Christianity is the faith tradition that focuses on the figure of Jesus Christ"

You may have a differing views on Christ than them, but they clearly have a focus on Jesus Christ from the name of their church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the subtitle of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Christ

First off, I agree with anyone saying that age is an advantage - at least among the majority of runners with a normal improvement trajectory, you'll perform better at 24 than, say, 21. This is obvious and not really worth debating.

However, we don't generally resent seniors for having an age advantage over freshmen. And that's all Whittni Orton's case boils down to: she's a senior, and she had the unusual Covid year to become one year older than typical redshirt seniors (I'm assuming she red-shirted one year). And she happens to have a birthday that makes her one of the older kids in her year.

I have a daughter with the exact same birthday as Whittni Orton (Oct 22). My daughter will be 18 when she graduates H.S. - this is just from following the normal guidelines of when you begin schooling - she hasn't been held back or anything like that. If she were to run XC in college, she'd turn 19 by the end of her freshman season. Then suppose she redshirted a year - she'd be 21 at the end of sophomore season, 22 at the end of junior season, throw in a weird Covid year, and my daughter would be 24 at the end of her senior XC season, all without having done anything "weird" or underhanded So I think it's clear that there is nothing sneaky going on with Whittni Orton and her age. It's just the Covid year that threw things off.

Not a crybaby wrote:

Pleas provide a link to a study or any data backing your claim. Science says that 99 % of humans are fully mature by about 18 years old. And many of the top distance runner in the world are around 20 years old.

This has been an issue for years (Ed Eyestone at BYU). I do agree that being 24 years old and competing against 18-21-year-old athletes is an advantage, but it also depends on the training workload the athlete is able to endure. I can tell you from experience that there's a substantial gain in performance due to the ability to be able physically as well as mentally prepared to train and compete. I was 20 seconds faster in the 5000 and 8 seconds faster in 1500 between the same time frame (sub 13:30 and sub 3:40). Most American-born runners don't take on a large training workload until after college (21-22 years old). The difference between 20 and 24 years old is substantial with regard to maturity and clearly gives an advantage to the older athlete. Yes, there are some anomalies out there, but they're the exception to the rule.

It is what it is and Conner is a very talented runner that deserves what he's achieved. The crazy thing is that he's got another year of eligibility, will he use it?

Yeah. I don't think saying there is an age advantage when comparing a 24 year old distance runner to a 19-21 year old distance runner is that controversial. There is a developmental gap. It is certainy no coincidence that both winners were 24 and that both runner ups were in the same age group. On the boy's side it is not as prounounced, but on the women's side you are dealing with team that skews older year after year that also trains at altitude all year. There are loopholes that coaches are getting wise to such as redshirts and transfers, but it is a significant advantage that is built into to the equation.

Tortoise wrote:

Mantz turns 25 next month.

Funny enough, wasn't he the youngest guy on the podium?

Imagine what it's like to be trans