I'm paying $35K annually to have a kid at NAU. I'd love it if this kid was one of the fastest in the nation back in high school, and I was paying the school less.
I'm paying $35K annually to have a kid at NAU. I'd love it if this kid was one of the fastest in the nation back in high school, and I was paying the school less.
It's just a stupid game wrote:
I'm paying $35K annually to have a kid at NAU. I'd love it if this kid was one of the fastest in the nation back in high school, and I was paying the school less.
???
Almost every school at Garmin was privileged AF. Can anyone name one black runner in the top-50? Any schools with 3-5 black runners on their team?
Truck Stop wrote:
And yet the best runners in the world from east Africa grow up on poor farms. Often not getting three meals a day and having no shoes. Yet somehow they kick America’s butt?
The reality is it makes them tougher and harder workers to not receive life with a silver spoon. So you could say these rich kids are actually at a disadvantage. But sure whatever makes you feel better about them kickin your butt come fall lol
Come on man. It’s common knowledge that the best cross country programs in the nation are predominantly (by a large margin) from the wealthiest areas of each region. It’s the nature of a cerebral sport.
Is the thread about wealth or skin color? Why are you insinuating that black people have to be poorer than white people? That is ban worthy. How would anyone know if someone is black or white anyway? Is having one grandparent who is African American enough to make someone black? What if one parent is African American but the kid is the whitest looking kid on the starting line? Please explain.
Jacob Kiplimo did not grow up "privileged" by your metrics. And yet he is without a doubt the best youth runner of all time. Running is a sport where privilege actually doesn't matter as much as you think.
Jerry Maguire wrote:
Kvothe wrote:
You missed the point Jerry. A kid in Bakersfield or wherever whose parents can't afford to give him a big allowance, send him to camps, etc. may have to work a part time job during the summers and train in suburban sprawl. This kid doesn't have dedicated teammates trying to qualify for footlocker or nxn and has to work much harder on his own, dealing with a lot more stresses than the Newbury Park kids to be at the same level. Nobody was training the lower middle class (or poor) kid at age 4 and he didn't start running until he learned running was a sport either in ms or hs.
I didn’t miss the point. Tell that to German Fernandez, kid worked at Applebee’s and got it done.
Oh and those kids in Bakersfield are living the sweet life compared to kids in Afghanistan.
Like many other places in California's Central Valley, Bakersfield gets oven hot in the summer but it is only about a 30-minute drive from fantastic foothills of the Sierra Nevada and not much farther from the Sierra Nevada themselves. It's not such a downtrodden place.
duder of la mancha wrote:
I'd love to see the data on the overlap between this board and Bogleheads. You can always spot a Boglehead by how much handwringing they do over their children's material position in life. "We wouldn't want our son to not have the nicest prom night ever, they'll remember it for the rest of their lives. Cut the check DH."
For all you Bogleheads, I went to school with your children, they do tend to do well materially since you plopped them right into the upper quartile in median income by paying for SAT classes, frats/sororities, and state U, but they end up soooo soft. Truly gutless with almost no executive function.
I'm registered in the Bogleheads forums. I think it is a fantastic community of investors and it is great for crowdsourcing often extremely well informed responses to personal investing conundrums. While they tend to be more affluent than average, most Bogleheads seem to be hardworking and dedicated to living below their means. There is a whole sub-forum dedicated to Consumer Issues which has a thread "What frugal thing did you do today?" - so I think your characterization isn't quite right. The Bogleheads community derives its name from John (Jack) Bogle, the founder and former head of Vanguard Funds who popularized low-cost index investing. I HIGHLY recommend Bogleheads and think low-cost index investing is a very good way to invest.
Here is Warren Buffett on Jack Bogle from p. 24 of Buffett's annual letter to shareholders in 2016 linked below:
If a statue is ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the handsdown choice should be Jack Bogle. For decades, Jack has urged investors to invest in ultra-low-cost index funds.
In his crusade, he amassed only a tiny percentage of the wealth that has typically flowed to managers who have
promised their investors large rewards while delivering them nothing – or, as in our bet, less than nothing – of
added value.
In his early years, Jack was frequently mocked by the investment-management industry. Today, however, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he helped millions of investors realize far better returns on their savings than they otherwise would have earned. He is a hero to them and to me.
Unless we are talking golf, lacrosse or other truly "rich" sports I'm not buying that the primary driver of NP's success is money. First off many while it is a fairly well to do city, it isn't as wealthy as many of its neighbors (Westlake Village, Oakpark, or some of the LA County cities like Calabasas, Sherman Oaks, Brentwood, Malibu, etc. and there are a lot of poor students whose families work in agriculture who attend the school. It is not nearly as "white" as I think many of the posters on this thread might think it is.
Second usually dynasties have to do with coaching, tradition, and community support not wealth per se. Brockton High School in the 1970s and 80s and even into the early 90s was dominant in football not only on the state level but nationally as well, their string of success was amazing with 14 state championships over a 35 year period, another 11 state finals appearances, 17 undefeated seasons and a slew of NFL drafted players. This was always a hardscrabble factory town but one that had serious unemployment and poverty as all the shoe factories starting closing in the late 60s.
Lancaster High School in Texas has had an amazing track program for the last 25 years and 60% of their students are listed as economically disadvantaged.
Dunbar High School in the early to mid 80s was as good as it got and its student body was generally very poor.
There are certainly examples of wealthy schools having strong sports programs but I don't think the biggest factor is money I think its coaching and community support and sometimes the chips fall in place to get some amazing talent.
chips ahoy timing company wrote:
Jacob Kiplimo did not grow up "privileged" by your metrics. And yet he is without a doubt the best youth runner of all time. Running is a sport where privilege actually doesn't matter as much as you think.
That may be true for the exceptional individual here and there, but it is certainly not true for teams. Producing teams versus an individual are very different things.
18rabbitskiing wrote:
Unless we are talking golf, lacrosse or other truly "rich" sports I'm not buying that the primary driver of NP's success is money. First off many while it is a fairly well to do city, it isn't as wealthy as many of its neighbors (Westlake Village, Oakpark, or some of the LA County cities like Calabasas, Sherman Oaks, Brentwood, Malibu, etc. and there are a lot of poor students whose families work in agriculture who attend the school. It is not nearly as "white" as I think many of the posters on this thread might think it is.
Second usually dynasties have to do with coaching, tradition, and community support not wealth per se. Brockton High School in the 1970s and 80s and even into the early 90s was dominant in football not only on the state level but nationally as well, their string of success was amazing with 14 state championships over a 35 year period, another 11 state finals appearances, 17 undefeated seasons and a slew of NFL drafted players. This was always a hardscrabble factory town but one that had serious unemployment and poverty as all the shoe factories starting closing in the late 60s.
Lancaster High School in Texas has had an amazing track program for the last 25 years and 60% of their students are listed as economically disadvantaged.
Dunbar High School in the early to mid 80s was as good as it got and its student body was generally very poor.
There are certainly examples of wealthy schools having strong sports programs but I don't think the biggest factor is money I think its coaching and community support and sometimes the chips fall in place to get some amazing talent.
Yes it is absolutely about coaching, you’re right. But exceptional coaches need to be operating in exceptional places for big success. Do you think it’s a coincidence that nearly 100% of the top teams across-the-board at the California State Meet are from the schools with the lowest poverty levels in the state?
18rabbitskiing wrote:
Unless we are talking golf, lacrosse or other truly "rich" sports I'm not buying that the primary driver of NP's success is money. First off many while it is a fairly well to do city, it isn't as wealthy as many of its neighbors (Westlake Village, Oakpark, or some of the LA County cities like Calabasas, Sherman Oaks, Brentwood, Malibu, etc. and there are a lot of poor students whose families work in agriculture who attend the school. It is not nearly as "white" as I think many of the posters on this thread might think it is.
Second usually dynasties have to do with coaching, tradition, and community support not wealth per se. Brockton High School in the 1970s and 80s and even into the early 90s was dominant in football not only on the state level but nationally as well, their string of success was amazing with 14 state championships over a 35 year period, another 11 state finals appearances, 17 undefeated seasons and a slew of NFL drafted players. This was always a hardscrabble factory town but one that had serious unemployment and poverty as all the shoe factories starting closing in the late 60s.
Lancaster High School in Texas has had an amazing track program for the last 25 years and 60% of their students are listed as economically disadvantaged.
Dunbar High School in the early to mid 80s was as good as it got and its student body was generally very poor.
There are certainly examples of wealthy schools having strong sports programs but I don't think the biggest factor is money I think its coaching and community support and sometimes the chips fall in place to get some amazing talent.
How does community support help?
SDSU Aztec wrote:
18rabbitskiing wrote:
Unless we are talking golf, lacrosse or other truly "rich" sports I'm not buying that the primary driver of NP's success is money. First off many while it is a fairly well to do city, it isn't as wealthy as many of its neighbors (Westlake Village, Oakpark, or some of the LA County cities like Calabasas, Sherman Oaks, Brentwood, Malibu, etc. and there are a lot of poor students whose families work in agriculture who attend the school. It is not nearly as "white" as I think many of the posters on this thread might think it is.
Second usually dynasties have to do with coaching, tradition, and community support not wealth per se. Brockton High School in the 1970s and 80s and even into the early 90s was dominant in football not only on the state level but nationally as well, their string of success was amazing with 14 state championships over a 35 year period, another 11 state finals appearances, 17 undefeated seasons and a slew of NFL drafted players. This was always a hardscrabble factory town but one that had serious unemployment and poverty as all the shoe factories starting closing in the late 60s.
Lancaster High School in Texas has had an amazing track program for the last 25 years and 60% of their students are listed as economically disadvantaged.
Dunbar High School in the early to mid 80s was as good as it got and its student body was generally very poor.
There are certainly examples of wealthy schools having strong sports programs but I don't think the biggest factor is money I think its coaching and community support and sometimes the chips fall in place to get some amazing talent.
How does community support help?
So community support helps in a couple of ways.
First, in order to maintain excellence teams need to have high participation in general and high participation of the most talented athletes specifically. Nantucket High School had a dominant Football team in the 1990s and early 2000s despite being very small. When they won back to back Division 5 state Football championships they were one of the smallest schools in their division with only about 120 boys in grades 9-12, over half of the boys attending the school choose to play football which is a very high %. This was in large part b/c football had strong community support and this support encouraged students to try out for football vs. another sport or not participating in any sports. Call it the Friday night lights phenomena, if you are playing in front of a full stadium and football or track or soccer, etc. makes you popular in town or school that's encouragement to play.
When my school played in its first state championship match for lacrosse there was only one division so we were playing against schools that were 3,4, sometimes 5 times larger than we were. However, lacrosse was the spring sport in town so we were able to compete and later one several championships in division II and later division III when the divisions were expanded in the early 2000s as a result of growing state wide popularity of the sport.
Second community support often drives booster clubs that often help expand participation by students who may not be able to afford to play the sport. While the wealth of a town can do the same thing I know many poorer communities who have strong booster orgs that provide supplement equipment, money for travel, etc. This is also reflected in town politics, many poorer communities across the country may have very good athletic facilities even if their primary school facilities are lacking and that is often as a result of community support or priorities.
Threads like this one show the true nature of this forum.
At least 3/4 of the responses are not about what the OP actually said. I can't decide if it is due to stupidity or if people just ignore what they want to ignore in order to argue.
CLBdropping wrote:
Can we all just take the time to realize that it isn’t all about talent? These kids are the most privileged high school athletes of all day. Summer camps away for a month, flying to meets year round, NXR, NXN. No wonder they’re so good. Have any of them worked jobs this summer?? I think not. They’re spoon fed everything and have it so much easier than other talent across the US that if they were on a normal xc team without this high quality treatment, they’d be a lot worse. They have better accommodations than some college programs. I’m not wrong at all. This ain’t McFarland. These kids have everything under the sun with the most immaculate support of parents in literally all of high school running. Also, haven’t they recruited kids to go to the school too? This is just eliteist California stuff and we aren't gonna act like they’re just good for no reason anymore. They have it better than anyone in the ENTIRE COUNTRY.
People go to NP not because of running.