female 6th grader with fully legit pr's of 5k 18:38,1500m 4:45, 800m 2:18 and 400m 59.1. daesha rogers from south florida!
female 6th grader with fully legit pr's of 5k 18:38,1500m 4:45, 800m 2:18 and 400m 59.1. daesha rogers from south florida!
If this is true... oh my god!
I've seen this a billion times. 99.9% burn out. IF it was an 11 year old boy that would be a different story.
That is some good range.
why assume burnout? ran less than 20 miles a week during xc season. also ran fully automatic 59.18 in the 400m this past summer would not indicate excessive mileage. i seriously doubt if anyone has seen that type of range at this age a thousand times.
I knew a kid who grew a beard in the 6th grade. He has a rather normal amount of hair now.
nice wrote:
I've seen this a billion times. 99.9% burn out. IF it was an 11 year old boy that would be a different story.
Wrong. The majority of top youth athletes continue to compete through high school. On the other hand 99.9% of kids who don't run continue to not run in high school.
A while back Track and Field News in their annual issue had a list of the top returning high school T&F athletes. They use stars for class - no stars for a senior, one a junior, .. The top returning 800 runner one year had something like ****** (might have only been *****), with a time of around 2:05 (which is a LOT faster than 2:05 or any of the the other marks) -- never saw the girl again after that, although she might well have been a very good high school runner, just not someone that was a superstar.
Girls can be their best at age 12 for both physical and social reasons.
26mi235 wrote:
A while back Track and Field News in their annual issue had a list of the top returning high school T&F athletes. They use stars for class - no stars for a senior, one a junior, .. The top returning 800 runner one year had something like ****** (might have only been *****), with a time of around 2:05 (which is a LOT faster than 2:05 or any of the the other marks) -- never saw the girl again after that, although she might well have been a very good high school runner, just not someone that was a superstar.
Girls can be their best at age 12 for both physical and social reasons.
Seriously? "A while back", "something like?" I'm trying to think of a time when a 2:05 would have been "a lot faster" than any other returner. by "a while" do you mean the 1960s?
princenamor wrote:
why assume burnout? ran less than 20 miles a week during xc season. also ran fully automatic 59.18 in the 400m this past summer would not indicate excessive mileage. i seriously doubt if anyone has seen that type of range at this age a thousand times.
Doesn't even need to be a burn out, a girl can completely change from 11 to 18. Right now her body is probably pretty similar to a young boy, so if she stays a little girl should could get stay fast. If she grows up, then who knows she could still be fast or maybe she will hit her prime at 15. It is really hard to tell and more so with girls.
With that said that is stupid fast for a little girl, and pretty sweet too
Our provincial association keeps top 10 lists for age group all-time marks. Interestingly, there are only two or three senior national team athletes who made these lists. One of them, Dylan Armstrong (4th Beijing at SP)didn't even make the list in the throws.
In other words, statistically speaking there is an inverse relationship between those who run exceptionally well at 8-12 years old and those who are stars in their 20s. Sure there are exceptions, but they are very rare.
It is extremely hard for a kid who has been a phenom at 11 to psychologically handle getting beaten as they mature through the teens. And most often they do get beaten as their peers catch up to their early maturing.
sisyphus wrote:
nice wrote:I've seen this a billion times. 99.9% burn out. IF it was an 11 year old boy that would be a different story.
Wrong. The majority of top youth athletes continue to compete through high school. On the other hand 99.9% of kids who don't run continue to not run in high school.
I didn't realize that one's track and field/xc career ended with the conclusion of high school.
Almost certainly in the 2000s probably early 2000s. How many high school runners do you think break 2:05 a year?
[Also, I meant 'a lot faster than the 2:15 (or 2:17?) mark, although that mark looked like it was at a shorter distance than the athletes best, so it was a bit misleading.]
Has it come to this? wrote:
In other words, statistically speaking there is an inverse relationship between those who run exceptionally well at 8-12 years old and those who are stars in their 20s.
This isn't true. While only a small percentage of prodigies are highly successful 20-something athletes, an even smaller percentage of non-prodigies are highly successful 20-something athletes. Let me explain, using numbers that are all hypothetical, but also all, I believe, on the conservative side:
Let's say at any given time there are 25 elite female 5k runners in America. And let's say of those 25, only one was a youth prodigy. However, from 10-30 years ago (the time frame during which the current crop of elites would have been youth athletes), there were only two prodigies a year, or 40 prodigies total. Thus, 2.5% (1 of 40) of those 40 prodigies is currently an elite female 5k runner. This sounds like a low percentage, right?
However, during this same time period, there were 1,000,000 American women born annually--20,000,000 total. Of them, 24 are are currently elite 5k runners. While that dwarfs the number of former prodigies who are currently elite 5k runners (24 to 1), it is also a much smaller portion of the population: 24 of 20,000,000, or .00012%. By comparison, the odds of a prodigy becoming an elite 5k athlete seem pretty good now.
But what if we compare it to just the percentage of females who ever give running a shot? Because, after all, it seems likely that most of the current elite 5k runners would have at least run in some youth competitions. Let's say, for example, that 1% of females try running during their youth; that's 10,000 runners a year, or 200,000 during our 20-year window. Again, while the number of current elite 5k runners from this group dwarfs the raw number from the prodigy group (24 to 1), the percentage is still much lower: .012%.
Thus, while nowhere near all child prodigies grow up to be elites, a much (much, much, much) lower percentage of non-prodigies grow up into elites, and the only reason there are more elite non-former prodigies is that the population from which they draw is much (much, much, much) larger. Also, the attrition of prodigies is much more noticeable than the attrition of those who never posted any exceptional performances to begin with.
Thanks for the heads up Mr. Rogers! Were you the dreadlocked guy at AAU JOs in Des Moines in 2009 who was loudly and verbally upset that she didn't break the 800m meet record? She'll go far with your support. By the way, nice t-shirts, the one with her face 3x life-size on them.
princenamor wrote:
female 6th grader with fully legit pr's of 5k 18:38,1500m 4:45, 800m 2:18 and 400m 59.1. daesha rogers from south florida!
Those are great times, but wait until she hits puberty before hanging an olympic gold medal around her neck.
my eldest daughter was very good for her age when she was 8 or 9 - no running training, just fit from playing soccer. Now she's 12 and has hit puberty - she plays just as much soccer but cant run well anymore.
Seen it with other girls too.
If she doesn't burn out physically she'll probably burn out mentally as soon as she reaches puberty, develops hips, and can no longer live up to the pressure that she's currently being put under
will never hear from her again after puberty. that's just the way it is.