What happens to so many high school phenoms?

You’re beating a dead horse and missing the big problems. Cooper was/is a criminal. So was Danielson. Hard to train when you’re in trouble with the law. I went to school with a multi time state champion in all three running seasons. Gatorade award winner. He joined the army and never looked back. And there’s at least two short documentaries on Michael Granville. There’s millions of athletes just like him in many sports that are talented but can’t handle college because they actually have to take tests and learn (usually). Derek Rose and Amare Stoudemire are glaring examples of athletes that gamed the system.

Or:

- Discovering in college that there's more to life than just the things they did in high school, like they're supposed to do when they go to college. Sometimes people discover more interesting things than running.

Also, your confidence in being able to identify high school athletes as divas makes you seem really weird.

TL;DR

but there's a big difference between USA high school elite and world class, which is what is needed to actually make a career out of running. Compare times of 18 year old Kipchoge or Jacob Kiplimo to the winner of your state XC championship

colder and wiser wrote:

Or:

- Discovering in college that there's more to life than just the things they did in high school, like they're supposed to do when they go to college. Sometimes people discover more interesting things than running.

Also, your confidence in being able to identify high school athletes as divas makes you seem really weird.

The first part of your post is spot on. It happens to a lot of athletes in college. Collegiate sports are not always what they're cracked up to be. There's a lot more to life than sports.

The second part of your post makes seem obtuse and not observant. Identifying a diva is not hard to do. They're usually not very humble, are conceited, and think they're better than everyone else. Capisce?

It's not uncommon for guys to mature early. There was a guy in my section that ran 9:02, 9:02 and 8:55 for his sophomore through senior years. Eric Hulst ran 9:04/8:50/8:45/8:44. Neither improved in college.

Coaching rarely has anything to do with whether someone improves in college. How to train is not rocket science and college coaches have their runners do similar things.

Training in HS and College is not significantly different. Maybe there is a moderate increase in mpw and an increase in length of interval workout, but that's about it. Since morning runs are not supervised, mpw is controlled by the runner.

Your diva theory is nonsense.

Level of talent has nothing to do with the potential to improve in college.

There's rarely a cumulative effect of training. A month of easy running will recharge the battery.

You left out the most important factor which is avoiding injuries.

- injuries

- bad college choices

- bad college coaches

- maxed out talent

- "life" the catch all for: disliking college, prefer to work a job vs run, parental issues, lack of support system during or after college.

Just like every awesome HS football player that signs with Alabama doesn't go on to the NFL, all great runners don't become Pros.

It's why when you DO know or meet someone of that level of talent you really need to think about how d@mn good they really are.

This question comes up every few months and the answers are always the same:

Not everything has the same ceiling....

Not everyone has the same improvement rate...

Not everyone does the same training to achieve success....

So a lot of HS phenoms train hard to get there, matured quicker in HS, and so just don't improve much after HS.

Same can be said for the transition from College to post-collegiate running.

Alan

Luis Grijalva ran 4:02 in the Mile and 8:43 in the 3200 his senior year in addition to being one of the best XC performers in California. He wasn’t top 10 or top 20 in high school, he was like top 5.

The real answer is expectations.

Everyone wants these high school kids to turn into Olympic contenders...it just doesn't work that way. There's only 6 middle distance/distance events per gender at the Olympics. Every 4 years 18 medals are up for grabs. It's unrealistic to expect every 4:02/8:40/FL champ to get to that level.

For every 4:02/8:40/FL champ, there are hundreds of kids who are in the next tier coming out of high school. The 9:00 types often go on to have better high school careers.

I don't care if you are a 4 minute miler or a 5 minute miler, everyone faces different obstacles as they enter college and adulthood. People want to pursue different things. Some kids are happy getting money for school and focusing on academics/partying/other hobbies. People plateau. It isn't unreasonable for someone to run their best lifetime times at age 17 or 18.

We need to stop jumping on every talented kid and appointing them the savior of American distance running.

I'll also throw this out there - social media and message boards ruin running careers.

You are either "the next great American hope" or "DONE!!!" based on your latest race. People on boards speculate that you are doping, doing too much, too little, going D3 because you're a brainiac but, a lazy athlete, going JUCO because you are dumb as a rock, picking the wrong school, autistic, gay, etc. Read enough crap online and it seems that you must dope to be truly good or that Africans are so far ahead that it isn't even worth trying.

You will see that 70% of the posters on most running sites are trolls, geeks, malcontents, and generally depressed and unhappy people. Many "fans" of the sport make it unattractive because you fear winding up bitter like them. Oh, and make sure that your personality type is pleasing otherwise, you will get slagged everyday for being boring, too chill, obnoxious, cocky, too humble, etc.

That's a great amount of pressure on athletes that are still kids. That's why I advise the kids that I coach to stay the hell away from this place and to minimize the time spent on MileSplit, Athletic.net, and other running sites.

-they get a GF who is a freak in bed and being away from home with their own place suddenly is a game changer for their priorities

-burn out. running lots and lots of mileage can take a toll on many people mentally and physically (not everyone wants to live the monk running lifestyle of Rupp)

-weight gain - many really succesful college runners have to starve themselve (eat tiny lunches etc). Its SOO much easier to gain weight at 19-20 than at 16-18.

-Increased academic load

-Reaching max potential early

-for girls: missing years of periods catches up to them

-focus on other priorities(maybe they develop a passion in law, medicine, software engineering etc.)

My wife and I were college runners and now my son is as well. We've talked about this and seen every combination of it. My thoughts are:

1) Best HS kids clearly have a lot of talent. In HS that's often enough to excel. But in college everyone has talent and then kids who work harder progress faster. Some learn how to train, some don't.

2) Injuries can kill a lot of careers. Tough to lose a season and put that work in to get back.

3) College has a ton of distractions - drinking, drugs, girls, etc. can bury someone. Not everyone can be Engler and be elite and drink a lot. I've seen kids drink themselves right off the team.

4) Burn out / peaking early. Kid who starts running at 8 may achieve their max performance by 18. Kid who starts at age 15 is still building base, etc. More upside for the 'younger' runner as the mental wear/tear of running is real.

5) Pursuing a career. At some point you realize that running is a very tough sport to make $ in... especially for kids who have good career prospects so the effort gradually shifts more towards academics.

To the OP, I think most of your list is sounds and agree that it's not the coaching. Sure, there are some good HS coaches but a lot of them are just teachers looking for some extra cash. In our area there are 1 or 2 good coaches / programs, the rest are a wasteland. The good kids are random events not the result of coaches making them great.

You are still wrong about Horter. His problems are all COVID-related. He was actually doing decently well before COVID hit him. 19th at the Region in CC as a freshman, was regularly beating his fellow Ohio classmate Arjun Jha.

I think too that you have some odd expectations that high school dominance means professional runner one day. There are tons of sub 9 3200 guys and 4:04 miler guys as Horter was in high school who don't end up as professional runners, and there are many different reasons for that. He was a great high school runner and he was doing quite well at Indiana initially before getting COVID. No one is "destined" to be anything in college or beyond. Kind of an unfair expectation on your part and not based in reality.

Just a Coach wrote:

it seems that you must dope to be truly good or that Africans are so far ahead that it isn't even worth trying.

.

lol, but this is actually true.

Its hardly worth grinding miles and miles instead of focusing on a academics to be a 14-15 minute 5k runner when you will NEVER get anywhere professionally and wont win ncaa nationals

Its better to focus first on academics and a future career, and run/compete for FUN. Dont let college running take over your life with training unless you are TRULY elite, willing to dope to compete with the other top athletes (who are doping), or are African (and also doping).

also dont discount the fact that many of these high school phenoms running similar or worse times in college might be......still having fun?

some people just enjoy running and competing, even if their times arent improving. maybe they like being on a team, having friends to run with. PRs and winning races might not excite them that much,

"Reaching max potential early."

It not possible to reach a career peak in HS just from hard traing. No matter how hard a kid trains in HS, further improvement is always going to be a result of physical maturity rate.

Morons on LR claimed that Young trained like a pro in HS and would not improve in college but that turned out not to be the case.

I will take on the coaching one. There are plenty of college coaches that don’t actually “coach”. They just recruit and then for the training just use what they think worked for them 20 years ago. So that training plan doesn’t fit every single athlete. There are many HS coaches that are better than college coaches but just haven’t wanted to make the leap or don’t know the right people to jump to college.

As someone else said, expectations are the issue.

The realistic expectation: most runners (high school phenom or not) will not go on to success at the elite level, but high school phenoms are far more likely than than the average high school runner to do so.

Question Assumptions wrote:

I will take on the coaching one. There are plenty of college coaches that don’t actually “coach”. They just recruit and then for the training just use what they think worked for them 20 years ago. So that training plan doesn’t fit every single athlete. There are many HS coaches that are better than college coaches but just haven’t wanted to make the leap or don’t know the right people to jump to college.

There constant comments about bad coaching but do you have an example? I ran for 3 different coaches and the workouts were vary similar and not much different than what I did in HS. It was always hard/easy and my teammates ran the pace they wanted to in intervals.

People comment about history teachers that becomes the distance coach, but why wouldn't they look online and/or talk to other coaches for training tips.

There have been many great runners from small schools with no distance running tradition. German Fernandez was probably the only guy that broke 11:00 at his HS.