Impossible to make statements like the OP did without having a glass ball that can predict the future. Masciarelli might not even have a running future if her prowess at basketball nets her a scholarship at a high-level program.
Impossible to make statements like the OP did without having a glass ball that can predict the future. Masciarelli might not even have a running future if her prowess at basketball nets her a scholarship at a high-level program.
YMMV wrote:
CV Threshold wrote:
Best thing I think I've ever seen on LRC about this subject.
I agree it is insightful.
Masciarelli strikes me as uniquely laid-back and composed (almost nonchalant) as well as being physically mature as it would appear, so there should be no awkward setbacks with maturation process as there is for so many more maturation-delayed young women. I also like that her brother is integral to her training; she seems to have a unique and balanced "ecosystem" around her running, including other sports. Huge upside if she sticks with running (not a given IMO)
Excuse me, but this absolute crap. Do Cole Sprout and Nico Young have "unique and balanced ecosystems"? What the hell does that even mean?
Masciarelli is a talented runner who also plays basketball and that's it. She is likely to quit playing basketball when she goes to college, so she could have more upside than other girls.
Chris P wrote:
If you have more accurate times post them. Those are the times listed on milesplit
Look I wish all these kids the very best. They're all great athletes and we should be encouraging them all to continue to work hard
But this is a silly thread. It's an objective sport the numbers don't lie. And it's also really hard to predict especially with teenage girls how they'll progress and how they'll develop in a couple years. But the bottom line is Katelyn Tuohy has for National records and has posted incredible times the other girls while a lot of them are running great times and showing a lot of Promise they simply haven't quite competed at the same level yet. Again let's wish them all the best and see what the future
We 2 different national championship races in XC. Tuohy won one, Masciarelli won the other. It is NOT foolish to compare the two. The nature of our XC national championships create these types of arguments. In fact, college coaches are stacking them both up right now to determine how much potential they have and what kind of scholarships to offer.
PR's are not objective. Anything can happen in a head to head race. They've never raced each other, but Masciarelli tried to race Tuohy and Tuohy chickened out. Masciarelli is an outdoor national champion in two events and Tuohy won zero national championships this outdoors.
SDSU Aztec wrote:
YMMV wrote:
I agree it is insightful.
Masciarelli strikes me as uniquely laid-back and composed (almost nonchalant) as well as being physically mature as it would appear, so there should be no awkward setbacks with maturation process as there is for so many more maturation-delayed young women. I also like that her brother is integral to her training; she seems to have a unique and balanced "ecosystem" around her running, including other sports. Huge upside if she sticks with running (not a given IMO)
Excuse me, but this absolute crap. Do Cole Sprout and Nico Young have "unique and balanced ecosystems"? What the hell does that even mean?
Masciarelli is a talented runner who also plays basketball and that's it. She is likely to quit playing basketball when she goes to college, so she could have more upside than other girls.
I think he meant that everything about her training and sports career is balanced. She doesn't specialize in one sport, she doesn't run extreme mileage, her workouts are conservative, and she has some training partners. Very well rounded and room to improve across the board.
Whereas many can argue that Tuohy's career has been unbalanced. She's been training hard and hammering for several years now - solely focused on breaking national records and course records. The scales are tipped all the way to once side and the scale may be on the verge of breaking.
Old NE Coach wrote:
According to Sydney's father, her goal is to be the point guard for Notre Dame. She's a terrific athlete, and obviously an outstanding runner, but people really should be pumping the brakes on all of this what she'll be, or that she's better than KT. They're both great high school kids, elite talents, but to speculate on how much better they'll be is way too early. Let's celebrate what they've done so far. To bash Tuohy because she didn't run the nationals isn't fair. She ran a lot of outstanding times during all 3 seasons, so let the high school junior make the decisions on when she should race or rest.
Remember that time when the Patriots went undefeated and then lost in the Super Bowl to Eli Manning and the Giants? Nobody is celebrating them as the best team of all time. Masciarelli is the NY Giants.
Bad analogy. Tuohy is the football team that was good for several years but all of their good players have since retired.
"Masciarelli strikes me as uniquely laid-back and composed (almost nonchalant) as well as being physically mature as it would appear, so there should be no awkward setbacks with maturation process as there is for so many more maturation-delayed young women. I also like that her brother is integral to her training; she seems to have a unique and balanced "ecosystem" around her running, including other sports."
"I think he meant that everything about her training and sports career is balanced. She doesn't specialize in one sport, she doesn't run extreme mileage, her workouts are conservative, and she has some training partners. Very well rounded and room to improve across the board."
I love it when someone tells us we are not supposed to think that the words we read mean what they say, but we are supposed to know they mean something else.
learn to read wrote:
I think he meant that everything about her training and sports career is balanced. She doesn't specialize in one sport, she doesn't run extreme mileage, her workouts are conservative, and she has some training partners. Very well rounded and room to improve across the board.
Whereas many can argue that Tuohy's career has been unbalanced. She's been training hard and hammering for several years now - solely focused on breaking national records and course records. The scales are tipped all the way to once side and the scale may be on the verge of breaking.
I am curious what Masciarelli's "conservative" workouts are. In her own words at New Balance she "worked hard" this year. I don't know what she thinks "hard" is but that is what she said. We also know, as was posted above, her coach in the Milesplit workout clip said prior to that May 3 x 1,000 meter workout they had "a hard week up to that point". The implication being that was not a "hard" workout.
So please tell us, since you know she is doing conservative workouts, what those are, so that others may go from 4:55 in the mile to FL champ in six months and 16:12 for 5,000 meters in one year.
Sydney did have blistering middle school times. She was the Massachusetts State XC Middle school champ and set a course record in 2016, and was the champ the year prior as well . Brakes were pumped in 9th grade when she played soccer and according to an interview her parent gave to a CT paper scored many goals for her school. She started running in 5th grade according to that article. I wonder though if NCAA championship Notre Dame Hoops Moffat starts calling which she would choose.
Zat0pek wrote:
One of the best things Masciarelli has going for her (besides crazy talent and parents/coaches smart enough to keep her in multiple sports for a while) is that she doesn't have a bunch of blistering middle school times as an anchor around her neck. Her parents/coaches weren't idiotic enough to enter her in high school races when she was in 7th grade (why some state associations/meets allow that is beyond me, but I digress) and post insane times at a point in her life when her strength/weight ratio was naturally higher than it will be at any other time in her life without training. She's free to continue to develop along a normal career arc without the nagging doubts in her mind about why she can't run faster than she did when she was 12 or 13.
I was standing right next to the track at the start of the second turn during her NBN 2M and I was struck by several things about her. The first was how poised and relaxed she seemed and how easily it seemed she dispatched a great field. Granted, there was no Hart or Touhy in the race but she looked to me like there was more in the tank, which is all the more remarkable given that she won the 5,000 the night before. If you put a gun to my head and made me pick who I thought would have the better career long-term, it would be a tough call but I'd take Masciarelli simply because, at least from the outside, her development seems less rushed.
And a word about "burnout."
It's not so much "burnout" as it is reaching the maximum sustainable training load too soon. It's like physics/dynamics in engineering. If you put a beam under a load and increase the load very slowly, it will withstand a much higher load before failing than it will if the load is increased quickly. Runners, especially young female runners, are the same way. Coaches and parent who put gifted, ambitious, prepubescent girls under heavy racing and training loads in middle school or very early high school (frosh, maybe soph depending on the girl) are doing nothing more than greatly increasing the risk of lowering her ultimate performance ceiling and shortening her career. It's not "burnout" so much as it is long-term sacrifices for short-term gains and reaching the maximum load too soon.
Gymnastics finally fixed this problem by raising the minimum age for global competition to 16. Women run faster than girls - you don't see 14 year olds winning Oly gold in the 5,000 like you used to see gymnasts do - so quit exploiting these talented young girls. Take a look at the high school, college and pro PRs of all the women who made the Rio team at 1500 - marathon and you'll what I'm talking about. Most were very good in high school but they weren't the national record setters. Infeld was the fastest in HS at 1600 at 4:41, Shalane 4:46, Simpson and Huddle 4:47, Hall 4:48 and everyone else was 4:50 or above (with Frerichs being the exception, but she was a high-level gymnast and multi-sport athlete). Very, very solid as HS girls but with a lot of room still left to grow. I'd bet a fair sum that there were a number of girls who could've smoked all of them when they were 12-14 or 15, but they weren't the ones getting a plane for Rio.
Gymnastics did not fix its problems by raising the Olympic age to 16. Although girls less than 16 cannot compete in the Olympics, they still train as hard as they did before that rule was in place, compete in high stakes national and international competitions, etc. The skill level at the 14-year-old national championship is much higher than the NCAA championship. The gymnasts who are successful at 16 are often (though not always) the ones who have successfully staved off puberty through massive amounts of training. I have personally heard coaches say that they need to push their young female gymnasts as hard as they can prior to puberty because once the girls hit puberty, it is much harder for them to improve skills, and most decline. This does not sound like a strategy to stop young female gymnasts from reaching the maximum load too soon.
Raising the age has not changed the general training strategy. The age limit just made it a lot harder for a girl who turns 15 in 2020 to ever make it to the Olympics -- she will likely be too old in 2024 to be good enough.
amen to not bashing any of these talents
SM has a lot of basketball talent - she was the co best player on her team this year as a soph with a sr who is getting a full ride to Wake Forest. Will be fun to see how she develops over next 2 years in b-ball. While she is a top 5 national talent in running, she may end up being a top 100 talent in b-ball. It's a hard choice even between a second tier womens b-ball college program and running, it's all about personal choice, but there is a lot to be said for the fun of playing a team sport in a power 5 conference, vs running.
It's a real pleasure to watch both of them run. Sydney is tall and lean a bit like Gwen Jorgenson, but she has better natural form than Gwen. She runs with a lot of confidence, good tactics, and is very relaxed. Katelyn is smaller and a bit thicker (no she has not put on 10 pounds this spring), she has an amazing motor, solid form, and can hit her pacing targets like a metronome. You can't say much about tactics as she is usually able to gap the field after 2 laps. Amazingly Sydney is actually a year younger than Katelyn.
I think it's great to have both these talents around as well as Starcher and Starliper and Hart and Van der Lende etc. Don't need to bash anyone - just enjoy the races.
learn to read wrote:
SDSU Aztec wrote:
Excuse me, but this absolute crap. Do Cole Sprout and Nico Young have "unique and balanced ecosystems"? What the hell does that even mean?
Masciarelli is a talented runner who also plays basketball and that's it. She is likely to quit playing basketball when she goes to college, so she could have more upside than other girls.
I think he meant that everything about her training and sports career is balanced. She doesn't specialize in one sport, she doesn't run extreme mileage, her workouts are conservative, and she has some training partners. Very well rounded and room to improve across the board.
Whereas many can argue that Tuohy's career has been unbalanced. She's been training hard and hammering for several years now - solely focused on breaking national records and course records. The scales are tipped all the way to once side and the scale may be on the verge of breaking.
The thing is is that there have been hundreds of talented runners and Masciarelli and Tuohy are only two of them.
Tuohy is most likely to be the more talented of the two. People generally run faster in college and their in their 20's than they do as 17-year olds. We don't have any details about Tuohy's training, but even if she's doing a bit too much and assuming she doesn't have a series injuries,she could could continue to improve as her body matures. There were countless guys in my era that probably overtrained in HS, but improved in college and behind. Other guys peaked in HS. We can't determine by looking at photos and videos whether she has peaked physically or not. We also don't know if she will develop child bearing hips.
Tuohy ran 9:01 during the winter, but faded in outdoor track. It's believable that a heavy school load and allergies were factors. It isn't proof of anything.
The comparison comes down how much upside Tuohy still has left and how Masciarelli will improve as she focuses more on running. For the time being, Tuohy has much faster PR's. All this talk about anorexia, ecosystems, being laidback, siblings and anchors around the neck is ridiculous.
Zat0pek wrote:
Infeld was the fastest in HS at 1600 at 4:41, Shalane 4:46, Simpson and Huddle 4:47, Hall 4:48 and everyone else was 4:50 or above (with Frerichs being the exception, but she was a high-level gymnast and multi-sport athlete). Very, very solid as HS girls but with a lot of room still left to grow. I'd bet a fair sum that there were a number of girls who could've smoked all of them when they were 12-14 or 15, but they weren't the ones getting a plane for Rio.
Sure but the question is any of the girls who at 12-14 could have beat them could have done anything different and been on the plane to Rio. Probably not. Heck for all we know they were training harder than the girls that were beating them. The olympians kept getting better but it is a reach to think it was because of HS training versus genetics/future training.
smugmug123 wrote:
Sydney did have blistering middle school times. She was the Massachusetts State XC Middle school champ and set a course record in 2016, and was the champ the year prior as well . Brakes were pumped in 9th grade when she played soccer and according to an interview her parent gave to a CT paper scored many goals for her school. She started running in 5th grade according to that article. I wonder though if NCAA championship Notre Dame Hoops Moffat starts calling which she would choose.
I worry that she is too tall and that may put a ceiling on what she might be able to do in distance running
Chris P wrote:
Sorry should say skewing things. Anyway Kaitlyn has 4 National records and has one every race she's in recently by big margins
She didn't take a step back. She didn't have an awesome outdoor season by her standards but she still had some really fast times. She ran something like a 4:35 mile at Penn relays if you adjust for the fact that she was carrying a baton. I think she ran a 437 split. And she also ran a 9 53 to mile.
Anyway I think it's better just to appreciate what all these Runners do and to wish them luck rather than trying to build one up against another in clearly an exaggerated and biased fashion
If you don't want to compare one runner to the next, then why the hell do we even have races? Let's just all hold hands and sing songs together. Everyone gets a participation trophy.
Most of the great elite women distance runners are much closer to 5' than to 6' tall and generally weigh less than 110 pounds
High school phenoms are a crap shoot and burn out by age 20 half the time. This girl could be in the same position two years from now.
Will you never learn!?
Kev2 wrote:
Most of the great elite women distance runners are much closer to 5' than to 6' tall and generally weigh less than 110 pounds
Yeah, you don't see too many very tall male distance runners either. The outlier was Jack Bacheler who was 6'7" and which is comparable to 6' for a woman. Like Masciarelli, he played basketball in HS. He quit basketball after his junior season and ran 4:28 as a senior. He went on to make two Olympic teams and had PR's of 13:37 and 28:13 which were fast for his era.
adfasfdasfasd wrote:
Zat0pek wrote:
Infeld was the fastest in HS at 1600 at 4:41, Shalane 4:46, Simpson and Huddle 4:47, Hall 4:48 and everyone else was 4:50 or above (with Frerichs being the exception, but she was a high-level gymnast and multi-sport athlete). Very, very solid as HS girls but with a lot of room still left to grow. I'd bet a fair sum that there were a number of girls who could've smoked all of them when they were 12-14 or 15, but they weren't the ones getting a plane for Rio.
Sure but the question is any of the girls who at 12-14 could have beat them could have done anything different and been on the plane to Rio. Probably not. Heck for all we know they were training harder than the girls that were beating them. The olympians kept getting better but it is a reach to think it was because of HS training versus genetics/future training.
Read the entire post, especially the part about the rate of increase in the training and racing load. Nothing is guaranteed, but there are better practices that increase the odds of success. Doing crazy things like middle schoolers in high school races or running two-a-days lowers their ultimate ceiling. These kids get hooked on the success rather than the sport, and success at that age is easy. Get them hooked on the sport at 14 and you’ll see a different runner in 10 years than if they get hooked on the success at 14.
Zat0pek wrote:
adfasfdasfasd wrote:
Sure but the question is any of the girls who at 12-14 could have beat them could have done anything different and been on the plane to Rio. Probably not. Heck for all we know they were training harder than the girls that were beating them. The olympians kept getting better but it is a reach to think it was because of HS training versus genetics/future training.
Read the entire post, especially the part about the rate of increase in the training and racing load. Nothing is guaranteed, but there are better practices that increase the odds of success. Doing crazy things like middle schoolers in high school races or running two-a-days lowers their ultimate ceiling. These kids get hooked on the success rather than the sport, and success at that age is easy. Get them hooked on the sport at 14 and you’ll see a different runner in 10 years than if they get hooked on the success at 14.
I did read your post and noticed that you didn't mention any evidence that your theories have any basis in reality.