What does the "average" footlocker finalist run in college?

See the post on the Footlocker class of 2008

The 2007 Footlocker class had Derrick, GF, Colby Lowe, Puskedra, Cabral, but those are top 10 guys. 20th place was Riley Sullivan who went to Stanford and, according to MileSplit, has run 30:45 for 10k, 8:23 for 3k, and 23:55 for 8k. 40th place Thomas Porter who went to UVA has PRs, according to the UVA website, of: 1500m- 3:55.46; mile- 4:15.93; 3000m- 8:14.80; 5000m- 14:07.94; 10000m- 30:06.72.

Remember that this is just a single high school race so it's not necessarily a good predictor of where people are going to be in relation to each other over the next four years. The winner that year was Michael Fout who went to Florida State. According to the Florida State website he has PRs of: 1,500 - 3:47.15; 3,000 (indoor) - 8:07.08; 5,000 - 13:46.19; 10,000 - 28:34.50. Compare that to 11th place Ryan Hill who has PRs of(gathered from several sources): 1500-3:38.36; 1 mile-3:56.78; 3,000-7:43.08; 5,000-13:26.34. Note, some of Hill's times were running this past summer which, I believe, was shortly after he graduated.

I guess if you wanted to you could crunch the numbers through the years and get a nice average. Just remember, four years is an eternity in running.

Great post.

The bottom line is that some guys improve dramatically and others do not improve much at all. With the exception of imports however and a few anomalies like Wheating, you would be hard-pressed to find many collegiate distance runners worth mentioning who did not run either FLNs or NXNs in the least.

I'd say 29:30/14:00.

FYI Porter was injured at Foot Locker in 2006 (as a sophomore) resulting in his 40th place finish. He continued to qualify the next two years. I think he was 3rd in 2008.

Also there are plenty of guys that don't come anywhere close to qualifying for Footlocker and run faster than what the average Footlocker Finalist ends up running. I know one kid that finished over 100th place at Footlocker regional and has ended up a sub 14 and sub 28:30 guy. Hell that is faster than many of the winners end up ever running. It all really depends on how much room they have to improve. Clearly the guy that I know had a ton of room to improve and is as talented as the guys that qualified for Footlocker, but just bloomed later in this career.

On the women's side if you're talented enough to get there that means you've put a lot of work in. But after that work you can't break 18 min's at FL I'd say your chances for success in college aren't all that great.

Body type is much more important for the girls. Skinny wins (and a great power-to-weight ratio).

I made a spreadsheet of 5K college PRs from the 2003 FLXC kids(year of Withrow, Rupp, Kiptoo, McDougal, Lomong, Bumbie, Trafeh, True). Unfortunately, I don\'t have it anymore.

If you took out the studs, most were in the 13:45-14:10 range. One or two quit the sport. Like the poster mentioning Fout above, Deak who finished 6th, left the sport competitively during college, and Lomong, 20th, ran in the Olympic 5000m final this year.