Best High School Runners Who Never Did a Thing in College or After

John Zischa 4:04 mile and 13:51 in HS went to Penn State and then to Oregon.

Most people never heard of this girl, Lynn Bjordland(No relationship) to Garry. She det a still standing HS 3K record of 9:06.

Any NC people remember Bradsher Wilkins? Won Footlocker South twice, went off to NC State and then dropped off the face of the earth. Anyone know what happened to him?

ck3237 wrote:

Most people never heard of this girl, Lynn Bjordland(No relationship) to Garry. She det a still standing HS 3K record of 9:06.

a) She already appeared in the thread.

b) She set a Pikes Peak record, some years after high school (so fails the "or after" criterion).

c) The name is "Bjorklund."

But otherwise your post was spot on.

hstrsrt wrote:

But otherwise your post was spot on.

Sorry, I made a mistake: the time was wrong, too. It was 9:08.6.

tyyt wrote:

Okay, finally lucked into a little more info on Lynn Bjorklund: PP record was 1981, it said. Also said that she had battled anorexia nervosa, which I had not known (or at least hadn't remembered). Still no info on where/whether she went to college.

Among other things, she was the *senior* U.S. xc champ while still in HS.

I also read on Wikipedia that she ran and her brother were camping in the desert and they witnessed a plain crash. She ran 18 miles to eventually provide rescue for the crash victims.

Zishka won the Golden West Mile in 4:03 and won the US Junior 5000 the same year in 13:55. At the time I believe only Pre had run faster as a high school kid in 13:52.

He did qualify for NCAA's as a freshman in the Indoor 3000. He also qualifed for the Olympic Trials in 1984 I think his pr was 13:48. That year he was also 4th or 5th at NCAA's in the 5000, helping Oregon win the team title.

Injuries slowed him in college.

ck3237 wrote:

John Zischa 4:04 mile and 13:51 in HS went to Penn State and then to Oregon.

Most people never heard of this girl, Lynn Bjordland(No relationship) to Garry. She det a still standing HS 3K record of 9:06.

Zishka ran 4:03.85y and 13:55 in HS. He was a huge talent. He ran before I did, but I have a few friends who ran at the Mansfield Relays (big Ohio Invite in Spring) back in the day and ran against him their junior and senior years.

That Invite had a 3000m (US was supposedly switching to metric system) and that year pretty much all HS tracks were re-laid or re-lined to be 400m. My friend said that he blew everyone away with an opening 400m or 60. Stupidly, several went with him and ran the first 800 at 2:07-2:09. I think he finished in 8:13 or something.

However, he did place 6th (second American after Jim Hill) in the '84 NCAA 5000m. Two of the guys that beat him were Korir (Gold in Olympic Steeple that year) and Peter Koech (Silver in Steeple '88 and second fastest 5000m all-time in 1982 - 13:09.50).

Since there were not a lot of meets set up to run fast for college guys, people didn't run sub-13:30 and sub-28:30 as much, but Zishka was not a flop.

Again, the thread should be defined as "Best Runners who did not win NCAAs" or "Best Runners who did not improve X-amount in college" if you guys want to keep going with this line of reasoning. I think about 5 real candidates for "doing nothing" have been mentioned for men and about 5 for women.

I bet his ratio for elite high school athletes doing things post-collegiately is better than anyone else's in the country... I also bet his ratio for talent received for NCAA success is better than anyone else....how about all the runners in HS noone knew of but were competitive in college?

How about Lanana? dude has basically played a system to give his athletes "academic" full rides when the athletic funds run out, and half those kids (from the stanford days, example..) didn't do anything. CU's team beat that stacked stanford team in 2001 with a walk on for their fifth runner. stanford had a list of footlocker kids which ran deeper than deep because of those scholarships and many of them never did anything. But we love oregen and lanana and rupp and nike, right...

[quote]it all depenz wrote:

how about all the runners in HS noone knew of but were competitive in college?

quote]

Noone knows everybody, so this ought to be good.

Mastalirs went to Stanford. I went to Arkansas. Change of lifestyle is what held me back, and I would guess the same for Mark and Eric. I was a caged animal in hs where I went nuts in college.

Coach Lange was awesome at Jesuit. I often hear that he burnt us out. It true. We never ran the huge miles or huge intensity.

I think Eric ran 14 min in college, Mark 3:41 and 13:58/8:043k. I assume we all could have run these efforts in hs.

I am still racing bikes at a pretty high level, although it is not my bread and butter. At 42, I am racing at the equivalent of a 29:30 10k guy and happy to still have it.

I did duathlon for a handful of years. Both Mastalirs could have great triathletes, but never gave it a go.

William Reed

William Reed was a real phenom, especially on the east coast Indoor scene around 1982 or 3. 200-400 guy. But there was a real sprint talent named Henry Neal around 1990 that ran near 10.00 in the 100. Can't even tell you where either went to college. I know Reed was in a really bad car accident.

Roy Martin ran 20.13 in the 200. He got fat his freshman year at SMU and still helped them win the 1986 NCAA Outdoor title with his 4 times 400 anchor. Disappeared and out of nowhere came back in 1988 to make the Olympic Team. Then disappeared.

Matt Withrow will always be the best high school runner ever. Webb, yeah he has the HS mile record, maybe ryan hall is now americas top marathoner, and dathan ritzenhein is a god. But Matt Withrow, if you have ever seen that race, he is the ultimate high school runner, he wore a headband at nationals, and he outkicked Rupp who shouldve won from the beginning.

Who gives a shit about what he did after, we all remember that race when we have to pull off an underdog win

Hey you seem to be knowledgeable about Colorado running. I've googled "what happened to ryan deak" and have found nothing that isn't at least 3 years old. Do you have any idea what he has been up to, or can you enlight me to the details of his "story?"

For girls their is no debate Megan o Reilly and Caitlin chock by far both busts in college period!!!!!!!

nyloco wrote:

Any big time coach should know that 1600m is often called the metric mile in the US, and the phrase "full mile" distinguishes the two:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_mile

If we have the term metric mile and full mile, then what is a plain old mile?

The point is that a mile is a mile. A metric mile is not a mile, so it gets a special modifier. A mile does not need any such modifier.

Everyone understand exactly what is meant - it is a phrase, not a modifier. Only a troll would go on after the first mention.

asdfasdfa wrote:

nyloco wrote:

Any big time coach should know that 1600m is often called the metric mile in the US, and the phrase "full mile" distinguishes the two:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_mile

If we have the term metric mile and full mile, then what is a plain old mile?

The point is that a mile is a mile. A metric mile is not a mile, so it gets a special modifier. A mile does not need any such modifier.

newname wrote:

And York has put out dozens of sub-4:20/sub-9:20 runners, maybe they didn't all develop much after that, but to say that "everyone who has ever run for York"?

Learn something before you write that. I bet they have had 50 runners achieve more than you did in college.

Everyone likes to say that York runners do nothing in college but let's not forget that the "dozens and dozens" of York runners that have run sub-4:20 and sub-9:20 is a gross exaggeration. York wins because they have a slew of ~9:30 guys, which is all it takes to win in HS. 9:30 guys are rarely going to run fast in college. York has only had 9 guys run 9:10 or faster in HS and if I remember correctly one of them went on to win NCAAs and another went on to run 13:05.

haha ryan deak, victoria chang