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

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"?

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)

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.

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

after playing ball for years donald thomas was close to his lifetime pr after the first year of dedicated hj training. 2.33 in 2007, 2.37 pr.

pj is now stuck at 2.17 since 2019. worse than donald.

new illegal wrote:

after playing ball for years donald thomas was close to his lifetime pr after the first year of dedicated hj training. 2.33 in 2007, 2.37 pr.

pj is now stuck at 2.17 since 2019. worse than donald.

Moral of the story, your great-grandparents genes will only get an athlete so far. It takes discipline and dedication to earn Olympic gold. It's getting cold north of N40 latitude. We can use Sport Gene book for igniting fires in fireplace. Genes are only part of the story.

We should all train according to our genes. I cant get llb fibers to work properly like 16% of caucasians and up to 40% of asians. Play on your strenghts. There are also differences between fast responders and slow, but it dosent mean that a slow responder wont become as good if he tries. Problem is to few are trying if they dont win anything during their first few years.

what I meant was that playing ballgames, especially the most explosive ones, you come pretty close to your potential. ball fans like to say their players could dominate track 'if they just wanted to', 'if they trained for it' lol. guys like donald come through only cause they already stood out from other players they're more talented then the others and they've BEEN training, you know, only every day. what's left is to polish it, that's it. there's no impossible 9.57 guys in the nfl or 2.46 jumpers in the nba