Or have things still tilted in favor of big four...football etc.
Or have things still tilted in favor of big four...football etc.
There is something called the Spire Academy in Ohio that focuses on track. A girl in our area left her traditional high school to attend Spire as a junior but came back home as a senior. I don't know what her experience was like.
I dont think HSs worry about "long term development" of any athletes. Those coaches want to win now.
Wikid wrote:
Or have things still tilted in favor of big four...football etc.
High schools don't make long-term development of football players a priority either.
I know there are several programs that do consider long term development. Yes, you will have high schools that do Paavo, or just run way too much mileage and its terrible for the kids' long term development. However, for every school that intentionally tries to max out their athletes there is another doing it right.
You just hear about the schools that are about being good now because they are good now. Look at the programs that consistently send guys on to the next level and they get better.
Then again, majority of high school coaches have no idea what they're doing from a training theory sense.
I run sometimes wrote:
...run way too much mileage and its terrible for the kids' long term development.
You could not be more wrong.
How many of those programs that "do it right" actually see kids win Olympic medals or go pro? The truth is there's no proof high mileage ruins development. There's more evidence that it has to do with late maturation of an adolescent. But let's be real... What do you consider high mileage? 70's...80's? For an 17-18 year old will hardly ruin their future.
The Donger wrote:
I run sometimes wrote:...run way too much mileage and its terrible for the kids' long term development.
You could not be more wrong.
How many of those programs that "do it right" actually see kids win Olympic medals or go pro? The truth is there's no proof high mileage ruins development. There's more evidence that it has to do with late maturation of an adolescent. But let's be real... What do you consider high mileage? 70's...80's? For an 17-18 year old will hardly ruin their future.
Pound them Donger and watch them plateau, not "race" as well as they once did, get discouraged... injured. Hope you coach in my division! If you do coach HS kids, how unfortunate that is.
There is no doubt that some kids can't (mentally and/or physically) run decent mileage in HS and some of them give up if you try to show them what real work involves.
There is also NO DOUBT that there is another group that if you don't give them enough mileage they STINK. STINKING in HS, with no way to improve, is terrible for the long term development of another large group.
The Donger wrote:
I run sometimes wrote:...run way too much mileage and its terrible for the kids' long term development.
You could not be more wrong.
How many of those programs that "do it right" actually see kids win Olympic medals or go pro? The truth is there's no proof high mileage ruins development. There's more evidence that it has to do with late maturation of an adolescent. But let's be real... What do you consider high mileage? 70's...80's? For an 17-18 year old will hardly ruin their future.
Yes. Nobody knows what "doing it right" is. If you listen to an interview with Bob Kennedy you'll find out that he was running about 30-35 mpw and winning footlocker. He didn't do a long run over 7 miles in HS.
You can then listen to Ritz and he was doing massive mileage for a HS kid. Both won a lot, both went on to be stars...
IMO the HS coaches job is to make his team the best. As long as the runner isn't getting injured, then you train them to win state championships, not worry about college.
My HS coach, 15 years ago, was exactly focused on long-term development. This was back during the York/Mead days and when dyestat, etc were starting to push the idea of higher milage for HS runners. Our coach kept milage around 30-40 but worked on a lot of strength/flexibility/barefoot/plyos type stuff before some of that was very popular. He saw our value in being able to blossom more in HS than wring every last drop out of us in HS.
geetar wrote:
I dont think HSs worry about "long term development" of any athletes. Those coaches want to win now.
There is no such thing as "long term development". Great improvements in the short term will not prevent you from developing in the long term.
Dne wrote:
geetar wrote:I dont think HSs worry about "long term development" of any athletes. Those coaches want to win now.
There is no such thing as "long term development". Great improvements in the short term will not prevent you from developing in the long term.
That's perfect. More people on here need to hear this. It's like they think it's good to suck in HS because that somehow means you won't suck in college.
The really good runners and good in HS, in college, and after.
I haven't met a whole lot of AD's who give a rip about cross country, frankly. I am trying to imagine my AD advising me to think about "long term development" and the idea is laughable. He doesn't care if our team is terrible or great.
I do think it is possible to train high school kids with a mindset of them having room to improve in college and beyond. I know we focus on that. We focus on consistent year round training, pre-hab so we stay healthy, not much hard anaerobic work, and developing stamina, endurance and decent speed and mechanics. Gradual increase of mileage over 4 years. My best boy, a senior, is running over 70 miles a week, my best girl (a soph) runs about 45-50, but she is unusual for our program, most soph girls are running about 37-40 miles a week if they started as freshmen. Varsity boys team (numbers 2-7 in high 15's to mid 16's) run about 50-55 miles a week on average, depending. 4 of those guys are freshmen or sophs so they have room to grow in their mileage over the next couple years, and then beyond if they run in college.
In talking with college coaches, most seem to want kids who have room to grow in college, meaning that they aren't girls running 60-70 miles a week with a lot of high intensity work or boys running 75-90 miles a week doing the same. Though, if a kid can handle that, it does show they are durable. A low mileage kid who is really good in high school is clearly talented, but may not be able to handle the higher load of college training and transition to the longer XC races. You just don't know.