critic100 wrote:
a 7 ft high jump on the high school level is to a 4:02 mile.
Yes, but what could HE run a mile in??
Sports gene: Meet the HSer who went 7 feet in the third meet of his life when the head coach didn't even know his last name
High School Running
Sprints/Field Events
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Yes, but what could HE run a mile in?? -
LetsRun.com wrote:
Unreal.
Great story. Mega props to the HS coach who got him to go out for track.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/varsity-times/la-sp-dorsey-pj-tshiaba-20180228-story.html
Why is he stretching like that? Really bad on the right knee. Do coaches still teach people the "hurdler stretch"? -
LennyZ wrote:
Although this is truly remarkable, I don't think that these mile time comparisons are statistically valid. Think about how many boys try to run the mile in a given year. Practically every boy who runs XC, for example, runs the mile at least once in a year, if not every single meet. The number of US HS mile/1600 attempts in a year might approach 100,000 since many boys probably run it 10 times, and huge numbers run it once or twice. If you are #23 with a 4:08 you are in rarefied air.
How many HS boys perform in a high jump competition in a given year? The 23rd best performance in this smaller sample is not equivalent.
That being said, 7 feet is a monster jump for a new comer. If some kid who never ran the mile before showed up on the track in high tops and ran a sub 4:20 1600 that would be a very rare event.
I think if you were to add in enough people in the HJ to get to the same participation as the mile, you would just end up having a lot of 4-5ft high jumpers. I don't think it would do a whole lot to the top rankings. Unlike the mile, where you can just throw the worst kids on the track, the HJ with it's limited space and coaching attention tends to cut the low performers. When I was coaching, we'd let anyone who wanted to give it a try in practice go for it at the beginning of the season. But most of those kids never got into more than 1 meet, if any, after they couldn't get close to 5ft. -
I work for a living! wrote:
Too much time on your hands Troll. Either get a real job...... or get out the door for more miles .
0/400 for your troll.
Maybe the OP should learn how to properly compose a subject title so readers know what the thread is about. -
My favorite chapter of the Sports Gene is about Donald Thomas and Stefan Holm.
You have Donald Thomas, the phenom, who with no background in the event jumps in the high 7's his first year. Then you have Stefan Holm, the shorter Swedish white guy, who has trained for over a decade and is the defending Olympic champ and gets beaten.
What is interesting is that people assumed Thomas would become some sort of world-record phenom, but he has not shown the TRAINABILITY that Holm did. Hold was a good youth jumper, but not a world beater. He improved due to hard work (and good genes for trainability, no doubt).
Donald Thomas has worked hard in the intervening years, but has not improved at all. His technique has even gotten better.
I wonder if PJ will be a Donald Thomas-type. Very close to his natural ceiling already. -
RacingtheCanteloupe wrote:
My favorite chapter of the Sports Gene is about Donald Thomas and Stefan Holm.
You have Donald Thomas, the phenom, who with no background in the event jumps in the high 7's his first year. Then you have Stefan Holm, the shorter Swedish white guy, who has trained for over a decade and is the defending Olympic champ and gets beaten.
What is interesting is that people assumed Thomas would become some sort of world-record phenom, but he has not shown the TRAINABILITY that Holm did. Hold was a good youth jumper, but not a world beater. He improved due to hard work (and good genes for trainability, no doubt).
Donald Thomas has worked hard in the intervening years, but has not improved at all. His technique has even gotten better.
I wonder if PJ will be a Donald Thomas-type. Very close to his natural ceiling already.
Andrew Wheating is the running Donald Thomas. -
A coaching friend of mine that was a 7’ jumper and coached several 7’ jumpers always suggested the depth in those events is not very good because athletes with the right body type and skill set are drawn to basketball and volleyball(girls). Those sports hook kids into clubs, travel teams, etc and they don’t do track/field. Guys especially are chasing the NBA dream ($$$).
I would wager many of the best potential high jumpers in the world are in the NBA. Sincere question: how many of those guys high jumped in high school? If the answer is not very many because they were playing basketball year-round, then comparing high school HJ to other events may not be valid comparison. -
Adhjit wrote:
A coaching friend of mine that was a 7’ jumper and coached several 7’ jumpers always suggested the depth in those events is not very good because athletes with the right body type and skill set are drawn to basketball and volleyball(girls). Those sports hook kids into clubs, travel teams, etc and they don’t do track/field. Guys especially are chasing the NBA dream ($$$).
I would wager many of the best potential high jumpers in the world are in the NBA. Sincere question: how many of those guys high jumped in high school? If the answer is not very many because they were playing basketball year-round, then comparing high school HJ to other events may not be valid comparison.
Sure, I agree with a lot of that, but you could say the same thing about soccer and football taking away from various running events. I think there is a lot of top level talent in every event that never sees the track. But yeah, it may be more pronounced in the HJ.
My main point was that just because you can dump a bunch of not very good XC kids into the mile to pump up the participation numbers, it doesn't mean that #23 out of 500,000 in that event is so much better than #23 out of 50,000 in the HJ (or whatever the numbers are), since 300,000 of those milers are the equivalent of 5ft high jumpers.
Anyway, I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. -
Hello Mr Dorsey wrote:
In 2017, 23 students from American high schools jumped 7 feet (2.13m) or better and the #23 mile (1609m) time was 4:08.62.
imagine running a 4:08 mile on your third try after a friend's dare
(distance running doesn't work that way no matter who you are, i know) -
What ...? wrote:
LennyZ wrote:
Although this is truly remarkable, I don't think that these mile time comparisons are statistically valid. Think about how many boys try to run the mile in a given year. Practically every boy who runs XC, for example, runs the mile at least once in a year, if not every single meet.
Did you participate in high school &/or college XC? Only about a 1/3 of the XC team in my observation go out for T&F. There are a few XC programs which are barely hanging on. In those few XC programs, a half a dozen kids or so go out for XC and three or four of those will participate in track & field. Schools do not have a problem getting kids to high jump. High jump is not pole vault which is hard to get kids to participate. T&F coaches won't allow awful high jumpers to participate. Track & field coaches will allow awful 1600m runners to participate. Comparing top 25 high jumpers versus top 25 1600m runners is a just comparison.
You mean on the men's side. I saw many female high jumpers at a local D1 meet attempting ludicrously low heights, 1.20-1.45m. -
Similar to Thomas from Barbados who became world class in short order.
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7 feet what????????? wrote:
I've been around track and field for many years. . . .
LOL ... and you have absolutely no clue how to relate an excellent time or distance/height with an event. -
LennyZ wrote:
That being said, 7 feet is a monster jump for a new comer. If some kid who never ran the mile before showed up on the track in high tops and ran a sub 4:20 1600 that would be a very rare event.
Not 4:20, but a 4:08 4-lapper. LRC boys would go hog-wild over that as a 3rd ever try at the event. -
for reference purposes:
7 feet for the high jump equates to 2.13m
the American HS record: 2.31 (7ft 7) Andra Manson (Brenham, Texas) Kingston, Jamaica 7-Aug-2002
American U-18 record: 2.28 (7ft 6) Dothel Edwards (Georgia HS) Athens, Georgia 7-Sep-1983
World U-18 record: 2.33 (7 7 3/4) Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) Havana, Cuba May-19-1984
cheers
