How comes runners from top HS cross country teams don't make it at the next level?

Most of the sucessful high school programs argurably don't train their athletes to develop long term is a fact that I personally experience first hand.

Results are more important than long term goals.

Most young athletes seem more prone to injuries and burn out. Often times, athletes like myself could not afford the cost for physical therapy so it ends tragically for most runners who continue to run on battered muscle strains. It is a vicious cycles when an athletes runs when he was suppose to rest and seek a physician advice. I was told by my coach to toughen up and run with my strain hamstring. He hated to see weakness in his athletes, he counter my concern by stating professional NFL players play injure. That day, I just had to listen and obey my coach. To this day, I am not running and now I am a spectator watching everyone else go on to running incredibly fast times.

Just a theory here.

Compare two hypothetical runners.

Runner A runs for a powerhouse hs program with a long tradition of winning and a coach who runs the program like a college team. He has many motivated teammates, some of whom can even keep up with him during workouts.

Runner B is from a lesser known program without much tradition. His coach has a basic but unsophisticated understanding of the sport. He has a few teammates who like to run, but none who can challenge him in workouts or are as committed as he is.

It's fair to say that, in a vacuum, Runner B is forced to develop a higher level of self-reliance and internal motivation in high school. Runner A meanwhile competes for 4 years in a highly structured, controlled environment. When they go off to college, Runner B is better equipped to handle the transition. He is used to holding himself accountable, pushing himself beyond what is required, and doing the little things whether he's told to or not.

ncaa_runner wrote:

kod3200 wrote:

Because they burn them out. A good HS program will send their squad to nationals, have them all under 16, blah blah blah, but they'll do it at the expense of the kids future abilities. But a great program will see their alumni continue to succeed all through college, even if that means not pushing them through 70 miles a week in high school and actually caring about the kids long term progression. Keep the mileage low, develop the kids. Its highschool.

Exactly.

Not always guys. Some coaches are not interested in taking a 40 per mile week runner and spending the next tow years bringing them up. Some want to see them in the 60-70 range and are able to spot the ones that will improve getting them up to 80-90. Not always the case but the 40-45 mile guys are often red shirted their first year.

Great way to put it.

Not many HS kids actually become elite in college and even fewer beyond. If you look at NCAA results, how many had great training in HS? How many did not? I'm guessing there's a little both. Become and elite runner is so hard to do.

"At the expense of the kids future abilities"

Tell me how actually having a chance to run at the college level is ruining a kids future abilities. Or tell me how being able to run at a high level and learn how to be competitive is ruining a kids future abilities.

The opposite sounds more like what you describe. A talented kid who has potential to run in college is undertrained (30 miles/week) and doesn't end up running in college. That is ruining a kids future abilities.

Aside from a few anecdotes, does anyone have significant evidence of the following?

A: Good runners from top programs having less college success than comparable runners from other programs. Maybe say something like rate of NCAA All-American per 9:15 3200m runner from NXN qualifying programs vs NXN non-qualifying programs.

B: All runners from top HS programs becoming NCAA All-American at a different rate than all runners from non-top HS programs.

C: All runners from top HS programs continuing running in college at a different rate than all runners from non-top HS programs.

D: All students from high schools with top HS programs becoming NCAA All-American at a different rate than all students from high schools with non-top HS programs.

E: Very top runners from top HS programs (maybe sub-9 3200m) becoming NCAA All-American at a different rate than very top runners from non-top HS programs.

My gut feeling is that A and E might be somewhat lower for top programs based on some of the arguments put forward in the thread earlier, while B, C, and D might be higher for top programs based on top HS programs attracting more kids with good talent to the sport in the first place plus providing them with more motivation to continue in the sport.

I suspect that for every top programs that might leave its athletes in a place where progression might be retarded, there's got to be 10 not-so-good programs that are doing worse. In that case, maybe A and/or E are no worse for top programs.

Coaching talent wrote:

ncaa_runner wrote:

Exactly.

Not always guys. Some coaches are not interested in taking a 40 per mile week runner and spending the next tow years bringing them up. Some want to see them in the 60-70 range and are able to spot the ones that will improve getting them up to 80-90. Not always the case but the 40-45 mile guys are often red shirted their first year.

That's been my experience. Restricting mileage in high school kids is wasting time that can be spent building their aerobic foundations. I get the worry about injuries and burnout, but I think that has much more to do with intensity than it does mileage.

I like this explanation instead of "They burned out!"

To go along with this, winning titles comes down to the guys in the pack. If your #1 guy is elite and top 5 in state, you still have to rely on 6 more guys behind him. If you have 5-6 guys who can run 9:35 or under as 2 milers, then it's easy to win as a pack. But, you still have to get a bunch of kids out and train them at a high level to find the pack..

Some cross country participation numbers for high school and college from nfhs.org (HS 2015-2016) and ncaa.org (College 2014-2015):

HS Boys: 257,691 (avg team size 17.3)

HS Girls: 222,516 (avg team size 15.1)

College Boys: 14,330 (avg team size 14.5)

College Girls: 16,150 (avg team size 15.1)

About 92% (girls) and 94% (boys) who run CC in high school do not run CC in college from these numbers. Only a small percentage of HS runners compete at the next level. That may be one reason some top runners don't make it at the next level (they are not trying). How many of the top runners only try for one year? High school coaches need to worry about motivation and performance in high school, not college.

Flash runner wrote:

I don't understand why so many HS XC runners from top HS programs don't do well at college level.

Well most of them run to get the scholorship. Once in university all they think about is beer sex and drugs and not the PED type.

They end up stopping their running dropping out of school knocking some welfare chick up and then some of them hang themselves from a chinup bar and then we here about these types of things on letsrun message boards where people like to troll.

I disagree with the people that say the amount of mileage a kid runs in high school dictates how much growth potential they have after high school. I think it is much more about the combination of mileage and intensity. The mileage alone is not the culprit.

Combine 70mpw with 3 tough workouts/races per week (as some top HS programs do), and there's not too much room for growth after that (for most kids). I think that is especially true when the program's culture is such that the kids are really getting after it in most of those workouts. Their success is built on training that is developmentally impatient, packing too much stimulus (in the form of combining too much mileage and intensity) into the 4 years of high school.

Contrast that with a program that builds its kids up to 70mpw with 2 workouts/races per week that are more moderate in nature and emphasize aerobic development. Those kids will still be plenty successful in HS, and they'll have soaked up a great foundation that they can legitimately build upon.

However, a lot of HS programs don't think that way or train their kids that way.

Art Vandelay wrote:

Some don't want to make it at the next level. Not everyone has qualifying for the Olympic Trials as a life goal.

Surely making the Olympics should be the goal nor making the trials.

There are a lot of interesting points, but define success in college? Is success being an All-American, a national champion? A conference champion? Consider the top teams in the nation. How many of their runners were All-State, State Champions, NXN Regional winners, NB Nationals event winners? Maybe one of two of them, while the remaining 3-7 varsity runners were probably above average. So if the majority of athletes on a national championship team are not standout individuals, why would we expect that out of them in college?

Now, how many of those athletes on the top HS teams go on to compete at some of the top collegiate programs in the nation and become a key runner on those programs? Or they go on to be key runner on a conference championship team, or even just make it to nationals with their team. Are those not examples of success? So part of the argument is defining success.

Another point not mentioned is this. In the top HS programs, coaches work toward developing their entire varsity group ... so that they can have 7 - 10 solid runners (or at least 5), minimizing gap. The stronger your number 5 is, the better you are. And as the competition gets stronger, the impact of your number 1 is reduced, while the impact of your 4 and 5 are amplified.

At other schools, and I've seen this, they get their one or two very talented athletes and focus their time and energy on them. This means that the workouts are all geared toward this top elite athlete, or two, and the coaches have very little interest in how the rest of the team performs on them. If they do well, great, if not, well, the team still has their top runner. This of course, assumes that the rest of the team even runs those workouts. Sometimes the non-elites on the team are just told to go off and run, almost as if they might get in the way of the real work.

I agree with above poster. It is not so bad to run higher mileage in HS, not saying Gerry Lindgren type of mileage, but you can build guys safely to 70 MPW and even a little more, build that early base.

The problem with many of these so called top programs is that they like to hammer, too much intensity and race really hard too often, but the coaches are trying to build their rep and fill the trophy case, so don't recruit kids from these programs.

ote]ncaa_runner wrote:

In my view, HS is not about winning titles and setting records, it's about prepping for college competition, and if you win titles along the way, then that's a nice bonus.[/quote]

There seems to be at least some consensus on this topic. A few posts later, this same philosophy was repeated and ncaa runner agreed. Apparently for many, the NCAA is the goal. Or maybe winning there is the real goal, but you have to be in a program to do that. This guy's handle is even 'ncaa runner'.

Now, it's difficult for me to guess much about the generation currently 17, but I had no interest in the NCAA as a teenage distance runner. Neither, as far as I could tell, did the guys I ran with. I had plenty of time to talk on 18 milers with my friends, and scholarships and recruiting never came up. It just wasn't on my radar any more than joining the military was. The recruiter didn't call me and I didn't call them. Ditto college track coaches. Didn't exist as far as I was concerned.

So, the idea of 'success' apparently varies greatly kid-to-kid. For me, it was putting together the fastest 10km I could. For others, it's a scholarship, or OT marathon quallifier, or whatever. Just because I don't appear on All-American lists desn't mean I choked.

As a border line top tier hs...sub 9:15, 3200, this nails it. Personally I ran 30 miles a week, was all state 5 times, etc.....get to college numbers; 1, 2, 6, and 8 nail it

Excellent stats on comparing HS to College runners.

Finally, a new theory wrote:

ote]ncaa_runner wrote:

In my view, HS is not about winning titles and setting records, it's about prepping for college competition, and if you win titles along the way, then that's a nice bonus.

There seems to be at least some consensus on this topic. A few posts later, this same philosophy was repeated and ncaa runner agreed. Apparently for many, the NCAA is the goal. Or maybe winning there is the real goal, but you have to be in a program to do that. This guy's handle is even 'ncaa runner'.

Now, it's difficult for me to guess much about the generation currently 17, but I had no interest in the NCAA as a teenage distance runner. Neither, as far as I could tell, did the guys I ran with. I had plenty of time to talk on 18 milers with my friends, and scholarships and recruiting never came up. It just wasn't on my radar any more than joining the military was. The recruiter didn't call me and I didn't call them. Ditto college track coaches. Didn't exist as far as I was concerned.

So, the idea of 'success' apparently varies greatly kid-to-kid. For me, it was putting together the fastest 10km I could. For others, it's a scholarship, or OT marathon quallifier, or whatever. Just because I don't appear on All-American lists desn't mean I choked.[/quote]

I always thought the point was to become as good a runner as possible? Oh no wait, don't train too hard you can train hard later in college. That's horsesh!t.

Alan