How is it that Will Leer and Nick Symmonds went pro the way they did?...

Pretty sure Symmonds ran 1:45/6 and beat the 04 Olympic Champion the summer after he graduated. He also won 4 straight outdoor 800 titles and 3 1500m titles. I don't think he ran indoors in college.

Leer was good but you're right about him in this case. There are 5+ guys in DIII right now or who have just graduated with better college results than him.

D1onstreetD3insheets wrote:

With that in mind, why is it that no other recent good D3 runner hasn't found success as well? There are a good number of D3 runners who have better PRs and finishing speed as when those two were in college.

Not so sure about that. Leer and Symmonds are #2 and #3 all-time for 1500 in D3 and Symmonds holds the record in the 8. Nick Symmonds ran 1:45-high and 3:40-high at D3 and was definitely undertrained. That would easily get the attention of post-collegiate groups. Also US mid-distance was weaker in 2006 when he graduated. Only other really fast D3 guy that immediately comes to mind is Ben Scheetz, who ran 1:47 indoor for a D3 record (and something like #5 all-time collegiate). He ran for NJNYTC for a while but haven't heard anything about him since.

They were both very lightly (or under-) trained in college, like a lot of HS runners who go to university and PR by huge amounts in little time (e.g. Murphy and Brazier most recently).

a few runners wrote:

D1onstreetD3insheets wrote:

With that in mind, why is it that no other recent good D3 runner hasn't found success as well? There are a good number of D3 runners who have better PRs and finishing speed as when those two were in college.

Not so sure about that. Leer and Symmonds are #2 and #3 all-time for 1500 in D3 and Symmonds holds the record in the 8. Nick Symmonds ran 1:45-high and 3:40-high at D3 and was definitely undertrained. That would easily get the attention of post-collegiate groups. Also US mid-distance was weaker in 2006 when he graduated. Only other really fast D3 guy that immediately comes to mind is Ben Scheetz, who ran 1:47 indoor for a D3 record (and something like #5 all-time collegiate). He ran for NJNYTC for a while but haven't heard anything about him since.

The top 10 D3 runners now have run around what Will Leer ran in the 1500m back in college, and many have faster 800m and 5k PRs. Was Leer also really undertrained and just oozing with talent? Basically, what I am asking, was it blatantly apparent on the national stage that Will Leer was head and shoulders better than all others?

I think I was proven wrong with the Nick Symmonds example already. Forgot about his Outdoor USA success that same year.

Leer and Symmonds had very different college progressions. Symmonds was a huge talent as a freshman, but Leer wasn't even a national level D3 contender until he was an upperclassman.

It is funny that they overlapped in college and both ended with very successful post college careers. I think I still have the program from the 2006 d3 outdoor with symmonds on the start list in the 1500. Symmonds was defending champion and Leer had the top time going in.

If you have a professional training group and see Will Leer's progression in college, knowing he's undertrained, and see that stride (that thing is beautiful). Why would you not give him a call and toss him a couple hundred bucks to find out if he is the real deal.

Bumping to bring everyone's attention to OP's handle.

Discus.

I'm not sure where you get the idea anyone "took a chance" on Leer or Symmonds.

Leer ran a 3:41 at the Oxy Invite during his senior year. He then ran a 3:40 in the heats at the USATF championships, qualified for the finals, and beat a lot of pro runners in the process. That was before he went pro. Signing him was a no brainer.

Incidentally, he wasn't really undertrained in college. He got a late start because he was mostly a soccer player in high school. It's probably good he competed in D3, as it gave him time to build up his training gradually (which is not to say that all D1 programs are meat grinders, but the higher pressure environment might have been riskier).

As for Symmonds, he's still the D3 record holder in the 800, and he was runner up at USATFs in 2006. Like Leer, this was before he went pro. Again, signing him was a no brainer.

[quote]800 dude wrote:

I'm not sure where you get the idea anyone "took a chance" on Leer or Symmonds.

Leer ran a 3:41 at the Oxy Invite during his senior year. He then ran a 3:40 in the heats at the USATF championships, qualified for the finals, and beat a lot of pro runners in the process. That was before he went pro. Signing him was a no brainer.

quote]

Need a little context here as to where that time ranked in the US? 3:38 hardly gets a sniff these days in terms of funding one can live on. Even Merber had to start off working at a shoe store with a 3:35 to his name.

Same agent.

Got locked into terrible contracts.

But Symmonds performed and kept track of business-side.

Leer whines and cried and didnt show up on most important times.

Pretty sure got asked to leave OTC.

I understand the Nick Symmonds situation and how he "broke" out. Looking more in to it, it was apparent that he was a star from his start at D3 athletics.

In the case of Will Leer, there are a good number of similar syled D3 runners. Jake Campbell from St. Olaf (1500m champion: 3:44 PR) has a beautiful stride and about as much speed and even more strength than Leer did at the time of his graduation. Mitchel Black, the 800m champion, is the same way. Incredibly smooth and strong. Also dominated D3 for his entire time there. But I doubt both will have as successful of a career as Will did.

so I suppose my question is, what do these training groups look for? Do they just look at a guy/girl and just know? Do they look at the training, race schedule, etc.?

You're putting too much stock in their D3 careers. They did not get signed due to their college performances, they got signed due to their USATF championship performances. Sure, there are faster guys in d3 right now, but what have they done on the USATF stage?

There aren't "a good number of similar styled D3 runners." Leer is #2 alltime in D3, and he ran that race at USATFs. And 3:44-high is not in the same world as 3:40-low.

As for contracts, I don't know the details of Leer's first contract, but I do know when he was with OTC, a lot of those guys had jobs.

If your question is how did Leer go pro "the way he did," we have to know how he went pro. I don't know the answer, but my assumption is that he got a deal that offered gear, the right to train with OTC, probably some travel to meets, and maybe some performance bonuses. Maybe it was more than that, I don't know. But just because someone is running "full time" as a pro doesn't mean they're getting truckloads of cash -- or any cash for that matter.

Also, as others have pointed out, it's not just running 3:40. It's running 3:40.06 in the heats at USATF to qualify for the final, a performance that (correctly, as it turns out) suggests a runner who can rise to the occasion and perform well in championship settings. His 3:40.06 ranked him 18th in the U.S. that year; more than half of the runners ranked ahead of him ran their best times in European races.

As for the comparison with Jake Campbell and Mitchel Black, you're probably right that neither is likely to have as successful a career as Leer did. But that's true for the vast majority of runners, even those coming out of D1 with 3:37 or 3:38 to their name. Leer may have been lucky to be running (early in his career) against relatively weak domestic competition -- but still, his string of top-5 finishes at USATF is pretty rare, even for people who started out with better credentials than him.

In terms of the opportunity to "go pro," any runner who comes out of college even today with a 3:40-flat and a finals appearance at USATF will get the opportunity to continue running if they're eager and resourceful. And if it looks like they're progressing along the paths that Leer and Symmonds followed, the opportunities available to them will continue to get better.

But I guess what you're really asking is "How did they know Leer and Symmonds would turn out to be so good?" And I think the answer is they didn't. Tons of runners get tiny contracts each year, and most of them wash out of the sport pretty quickly. The ones that succeed look like smart picks, but that's often just hindsight bias (though Symmonds did seem to have some of that "it" factor right from when he graduated, as I recall).

D1onstreetD3insheets wrote:

Jake Campbell from St. Olaf (1500m champion: 3:44 PR) has a beautiful stride and about as much speed and even more strength than Leer did at the time of his graduation.

If he has as much speed as Leer did, and he's stronger than Leer was, then why is his PR 4 seconds slower than Leer's was at this point in their careers? I don't think you're giving Leer enough credit compared to other D3 runners.

The idea of sponsored teams were still pretty new (at least, in its current form), and as Leer has recently said on various media outlets, he signed a "peanuts" contract coming out of college that his dad advised him not to sign. Symmonds and Leer went pro for nothing, banking on their future ability, like many, many new grads do, except for them it actually worked. They didn't sign Brazier contracts out of D3, and Leer to date has not received money according to his ability. They ran fast times because they are talented and worked hard and smart. I'm sure it wasn't easy.