Imagine how much better they could be

Your school is also an example of what if they still had that culture AND were twice as big? There are some small schools in affluent areas that excell in XC. Others have a coach who can draw what talent they DO have and get the most out of it.

I'd love to know where your school is- it sounds great.

I'm not trying to be deliberately dense. I just don't understand which factor in the training equation says "insert number of people at your school here". It is literally all about training and coaching. Stanford is not even half the size of most big D1 schools and look at how well they are doing. That may seem like a dumb point at first, but it's the same dumb point that you some of you guys are using when you say "if these two schools merge with 3 stars each, now they'll have 6 stars so size does matter" example.

I suspect that the only thing a large school remotely has to do with good cross country teams is some sort of CORRELATION (not causality!). I suspect that the real underlying theme might be something socioeconomic not just "the size of your school". Does anyone even know the standard deviation of this "law of statistics" that supposedly exists in the high system cross country system?

Just cause the school's population increased, doesn't mean the team did? The school did, the team is still the same size, so I too don't understand what the hell you're saying. And your tornado story makes no sense either. Well, yeah, the team would be better because the team got bigger, not the school.

Ok, it's not deliberate denseness. It's faulty perception because it's NOT ALL about training and coaching. Those are major factors but saying it's all about those things assumes that every kid who turns out for the team has the same potential, and that as long as you train those kids well they'll all get to around the same times.

But it doesn't work that way. A very small number of kids have, say, sub 9:30 two mile potential, a good many more have sub 10:20 potential and maybe all of them have sub 12:00 potential.

Let's say one kid in a thousand has sub 9:30 potential as a high schooler but only one in three of those kids will ever actually go out for cross country or track. Are you more likely to get that 1 in 1,000 kid on your team at a school with 1,500 boys or at one with 500 boys?

Let's say that one kid in fifty has sub 10:20 potential but again, two of three won't come out for the sport. The school with 1,500 boys will have thirty potential sub 10:20 two milers and ten of them would actually turn out for their team. The school with 500 boys would have ten who could go under 10:20 and get three or four of them out for their team.

Yes, the coach at the smaller school may be good enough that he gets those kids to their 10:20 or more and the coach at the big school may not be very good and maybe none of those kids will get their 10:20 and they may lose to the better coached, small school. But that's the exception.

It's not ALL about training and coaching. It's also about WHO you're training and coaching.

Runn, I know some of the kids at our school look in here and I don't want to "out" anyone. Drop me an e-mail if you want and I'll tell you where we are. It's not a national powerhouse school by any means, just a good local program.

Listen, my biggest gripe with this statistics idea is that you guys accept it as causal and as a guarantee. Furthermore, I've seen no concrete evidence that everyone does NOT have the same potential.

Statistics are not guarantees of occurrence. And even if this notion of talent and potential exists, just because you have more people, does not mean that you should have more of the talented people on your team. It's 50/50. You either will have them on your team or you don't. It has nothing to do with how big the school is. It would have to do with whether these kids were in the school in the first place and whether they wanted to come out for cross country. There's no affirmative action god managing the team's roster otherwise every team would have the same time distributions - which they don't.

Exceptions and anomalies prove that the idea is false and that, at best, the idea is a correlation but not a cause nor a guarantee.

I was right. There is no point debating you.

Because I don't accept your faulty statistics idea?

"Troll still HUUUNGRYYY!!!" chew chew slop chew slop chew MerrrRRRRPP!!

quick question wrote:

Because I don't accept your faulty statistics idea?

quick question wrote:

Because I don't accept your faulty statistics idea?

Sure. Anything you say.

why are you being like that?

Honestly, I don't mean this as a personal insult but don't know what else to say. But if you really believe some of what you've written, you're really too dumb to have an intelligent conversation. I'm sorry to put it that way but, gee, you REALLY have never seen evidence that everyone can't be trained to the same performances? That's mind boggling and I don't want to go any further on such a stupid track.

HRE wrote:

Honestly, I don't mean this as a personal insult but don't know what else to say. But if you really believe some of what you've written, you're really too dumb to have an intelligent conversation. I'm sorry to put it that way but, gee, you REALLY have never seen evidence that everyone can't be trained to the same performances? That's mind boggling and I don't want to go any further on such a stupid track.

No, I've never seen any evidence that everyone can't be trained to the same performances. The "slow" people that I personally know are slow because they don't train well or don't recover well. Some of them think that training over the summer is dumb, while others would rather do other things instead of train (a job, a girlfriend, drugs, etc), and while yet others refuse to do anything less than 100mpw.

So, yes, I've seen no evidence that they could NOT perform just as well if they actually trained/recovered properly.

So you run a 2:05 marathon, I presume?

wishful thinking wrote:

So you run a 2:05 marathon, I presume?

huh?

You say "I've never seen any evidence that everyone can't be trained to the same performances."

Meaning same training = same performances. If that were true than all you'd have to do is train like a 2:05 marathoner to actually run 2:05.

There are only 800 kids in the school, only a handful of them join the cross country program. I'm sure North Shore, along with every other school in the country, could have more faster than 11:30 in the 3K if people came out. Size of the school doesn't matter!

12 under 11:30 for 3K isn't very impressive to me.

In response to above quote:

How is it that every state I believe has their cross-country and state championship based on population of school.

Why? because except for the few out their i.e. Tatnell, North Shore, Bronxville etc when there is a larger pool of students to choose from (assuming everything else is equal i.e coach, climate, facilities etc) there will be an inherent advantage.

As amazing as Bill Aris is at FM, if he was given a typical large CA school with 3500 kids and no soccer in the fall, imagine what his results would be. There as an absolute direct correlation with size of ones school and team (not individual) performance. This does not mean a small school can not be highly successful, but when there is a smaller pool to choose from then the chances are the team will not be as good. (assuming everything else is equal-as stated above)

Concerned Coach wrote:

In response to above quote:

How is it that every state I believe has their cross-country and state championship based on population of school.

Are sports within the same school allowed to operate across different classification systems? If not, then that might be the answer to your question.

wishful thinking wrote:

You say "I've never seen any evidence that everyone can't be trained to the same performances."

Meaning same training = same performances. If that were true than all you'd have to do is train like a 2:05 marathoner to actually run 2:05.

Ok, so what is your point? I don't see exactly where your disagreement is or what your point is. How does a 2:05 marathoner train?

2009 3200m results:

Mahoney 10:27

Bulder 10:30

Randall 10:39

Frankian 10:41

Murakami 10:47

Jauregui 10:52

Converted 3K's

Mahoney 9:44

Bulder 9:46

Randall 9:55

Frankian 9:57

Murakami 10:02

Jauregui 10:06