Scouting high school talent? Look for the guys NOT on a standout relay team

Things have gone pretty well for that guy Webb - and he had some pretty fast relay guys to run with...

But better coaches are better at finding and nurturing talent.

I think this is a 50/50 deal. For college coaches, finding a guy that ran on relay squad, is probably more exciting because the guy will be a team player.

For professional levels though, this has no bearing.

You have a point. Deep teams year after year have good coaches and their athletes will be closer to maxing out. So, if you are choosing between two guys with similar times, like Andrews and Springer, it would stand to reason that you choose the anomaly, like Andrews. Of course, it might just be that the coach's style and the athlete's strengths correlated perfectly in a case like Andrews. Someone on another thread pointed out that Joe Falcon and Matt Tegenkamp had the same high school coach, and Alan Webb and Richard Smith (1:48-9 800m in high school) were obviously at South Lakes at the same time, so their having a good hs coach didn't limit the development of 3/4 and there is a lot of undeveloped talent in this country. In some cases, the coach is great in ideas but lacks the particular skills of getting the athletes out for the team or motivating the athletes to do the hard workouts.

idea thinker wrote:

I present the following proposition -

If you want to know which high school star will develop the most in college and beyond, look at whether they are part of a standout relay team.

For example, Andrew Springer is part of a very good DMR team. On the other hand, I don't see Robby Andrews anchoring any teams at NON.

The presence of other good athletes at Springer's school suggests at least part of his success is due to competent coaching. But they lack of Andrews's star teammates suggests his success is based more on talent. Once Andrews gets some better coaching, look out.

This is just an example. But what do you think of this logic? I'm sure we can find examples supporting and disputing this. But on balance, where does the evidence lie?

Springer is obviously very talented, not sure the coaching is that great. Seems like his coach runs Springer as hard as he can get away with and as often as possible, call it a crash and burn program. There are many like that, not saying all teams with good relays are the product of crazy coaching, many are just great programs, just wouldn't include springer's coach in that group.

idea thinker wrote:

For example, Andrew Springer is part of a very good DMR team. On the other hand, I don't see Robby Andrews anchoring any teams at NON.

Not disagreeing with your theory, but Robby Andrews anchored his team's DMR at Penn and they got like 2nd or 3rd.

I agree with your conclusion that hs guys not on a standout team will progress better in college but not with your reasoning. It has more to do with over racing, as another poster mentioned, than thriving on competition. Another great example of this from a few years back is Centrowitz and Forys. Forys ran a lot of DMRs for Colts Neck and usually got the stick way back, so he was forced to empty the tank. Centrowitz, on the other hand, was able to hand pick his races and didn't run as many all out efforts. Both had equall success in high school, but obviously Centrowitz has had a much better college career this far.

More often than not, that may be true, but there are also those runners with basically no team and no coach who look up training ideas on the internet and log ~100 miles a week.

Sort of Agree wrote:

I agree with your conclusion that hs guys not on a standout team will progress better in college but not with your reasoning. It has more to do with over racing, as another poster mentioned, than thriving on competition. Another great example of this from a few years back is Centrowitz and Forys. Forys ran a lot of DMRs for Colts Neck and usually got the stick way back, so he was forced to empty the tank. Centrowitz, on the other hand, was able to hand pick his races and didn't run as many all out efforts. Both had equall success in high school, but obviously Centrowitz has had a much better college career this far.

Forys had a HS coach who believed in training very hard, both boys and girls, he has HS success but the kids don't develop much beyond that.

Bvmp for reassessment...

His brother improved a ton.