Why are we not tapping into the Native American talent pool?

You mean like peyote? Not sure if that would help if you were having a bad trip while training

This just in;

Wings of America dominates the quantity and occasionally the quality of youth running.

The age cheating is rampant in this group.

They get subsidies to travel to meets when they are ‘youths’, the subsidies are my tax dollars, perhaps yours too.

When the subsidies (free taxpayer money) dry up, so do the runners.

For the record:

Every Wings runner that has competed on their national teams since 1988 has had to submit a birth certificate to USATF to confirm their junior eligibility- just like every other person that runs USA XC Champs. Kudos to USATF for protecting junior USA’s from the droves of Native 20-somethings that would travel across the country to run what has become a mediocre race at best if they didn’t require age verification! In fact, most young Natives have their passports at the ready and aren’t competing in domestic races because they’d rather just jump straight to international competition and take the spot from a kid from a non-Native kid whose parents work their butts off to send them to a sports psychologist and cryotherapy once a week...

Your “free taxpayer money” myth holds about as much weight as pre-wrap. Not-for-profits (or “non governmental organizations”) like Wings of America exist to provide support to constituents that don’t get it from “the system”.

But- if you want to get technical- I suppose both Billy Mills (Oglala Lakota) and Louis Tewanima (Hopi) both got “government subsidies” to help with their training. Billy just had to serve honorably as a U.S. Marine and Tewanima just had to go to Carlisle Indian School... But Wings didn’t exist back then.

I wouldn't be surprised if generally speaking, african-american athletes are motivated more by money than their white counterparts, since a larger percentage probably grew up poor. Imagine you're a young, poor, talented athlete. Do you dedicate yourself to running when you can make millions in the NBA/NFL/MLB/any other sport americans actually care about?

Native American kids are work horses and in Canada, youth/junior coaches love working with them when they. I've seen plenty of native kids jump onto a track and run a sub 5-min mile off zero training. The rate of improvement is insane as well. It isn't shocking to say a native kids who can barely run sub 2:20 for 800m year one, will break 2:00 the next. I'm native myself and went from 2:18 to 2:05 after 10 months of regular training.

Native kids are also insanely aggressive and will be the kind of runners to push the pace to try and break others. If you've ever seen them play hockey or lacrosse, that ferocity transfers into other sports too.

The issue of why there aren't more at the college/elite level has to do with social and economic issues rather than talent. The native community as a whole doesn't trust "white man's" sport and society. Kids are often pushed away from sport by parents/chefs either not wanting to pay for it, keeping scholarship money for themselves, or distrusting that a white men could ever want their child to succeed. They few Native kids motivated to have a better life often end up focusing on education and let sport fall aside.

There isn't anything white sporting society can do to help native kids succeed in sport. It is up to them to decide to try and go after something successful or stay trapped in the cycle of the reserves.

Market forces wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if generally speaking, african-american athletes are motivated more by money than their white counterparts, since a larger percentage probably grew up poor. Imagine you're a young, poor, talented athlete. Do you dedicate yourself to running when you can make millions in the NBA/NFL/MLB/any other sport americans actually care about?

While I get the point that the big pro sports pay more and garner more attention, I don't think the kid that could be a great, or really good distance runner is the same as the guy that has potential in the ball sports, other than maybe soccer (and we certainly don't produce a lot of great AA soccer players either.)

If you've ever looked at the starting line of a distance race none of those guys would ever be confused with a linebacker/running back or even WR.

No way at all wrote:

Sorry, but Elizabeth Warren doesn’t look that fast to me

Well, she's running circles around Trump.

What's interesting is that a screwed up home life is what motivated me as a youth runner and I was quite aggressive. Running is a great outlet for pent-up emotions.

seymour butz wrote:

Let's face it, apart from Rupp and the Kenyan-Americans, American distance running (10K and up) is an embarrassment. We have professional runners struggling to run 28 minutes for 10K and 2:12 for the marathon. Since our white boys aren't getting it done, why are we not looking into recruiting Native Americans into the sport? A lot of these guys have incredible natural talent. I went to high school in South Dakota and every year there were Natives that would show up and run low 16s for 5K on basically no training. Problem is none of these guys would go to college so after high school they never ran a step again.

But just imagine if we get a large group of these guys to build up to 100 mpw over several years. We'd have more sub 2:10 marathoners than we'd know what to do with.

Because there hardly are any left? Senator Warren does have 2 children however.

Go West, young man wrote:

I lived in a western town, with an annual half marathon. One year, some dude from a nearby reservation showed up having run once or twice the week before, in preparation. HARD course, something around 1K elevation gain and loss, and he ran in rough gym shorts and Chucks. He ran a 1:07 or 08, I know it was under 1:10. He was nearly 30 at the time, I recall, and had run track in high school.

And this movie rocks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MltkpOjafhA

Powwow Highway. Looks solid.

Spot On!

If anything these kids should just run to earn a college education. If they develop into a world class runner then so be it. The ingredients are there for Native Americans to be dominate runners.

dunes runner wrote:

No way at all wrote:

Sorry, but Elizabeth Warren doesn’t look that fast to me

Well, she's running circles around Trump.

Kind of how like Connor Mc ran circles around Khabibs's fists.

BUTTHOLE SURFER wrote:

Spot On!

If anything these kids should just run to earn a college education. If they develop into a world class runner then so be it. The ingredients are there for Native Americans to be dominate runners.

If you are Native American there are countless ways to get a scholarship to college. Most are a lot easier than running.

i lived with Brandon Leslie for a few months, he hadnt ran in years, was 30lbs overweight and qualified for the olympic trials 10k in 3 months or so, it was insane how talented he was. he said the big problem is everyone wants a piece of the pie, taking advantage of anyone who shows promise like pimps, and that he said he was told since he was first discovered that he was going to be the next billy mills, but not just for the Navajo but for all natives...he said that pressure was too much

Rephrasing

I don't really mean removing them from the reservation, that would not be possible. What I really mean is removing them from the control and distractions. Native kids are very selfless, no matter how talented they are, they will always defer to the wishes of their parents and tribal leaders. Obedience is a good thing, but what I found is teens who would not fight a little bit for what was important to them. That was my impression from several decades ago. The Navaho girl I mentioned who ran an 11:20 2-mile with very little training. She was also an A student and probably could have won some Arizona state H.S. championships and earned a college scholarship, but her parents didn't like her running and refused to allow her to take off a couple hours a week from the family jewelry business to train. Btw, this girl said she knew some other Navaho girls who were just as fast. The H.S. local XC team was all White, without a doubt the fastest kids in that school were Navaho, but they didn't participate.

First, not all peoples are reconciled. Every nation, in all the senses, on the face of the earth, face challenging realities, unredeemed pasts. They have not yet taken off into orbit, the orbit of perfection and enlightenment. Therefore, the politics among nations must be considered and it reveals how many peoples need to have their needs considered. Think of how complex the historical relationships between the worlds peoples have been. They also lack true teachers and leaders to navigate this successfully and illuminate them.

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/joseph.htm

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cherokee-nation-elizabeth-warren-apos-002531596.html

We would rather the president of the United States and Senator Warren focus in on things that affect us -- housing and health care, clean water, clean air. Chuck Hoskin Jr., secretary of state of the Cherokee Nation

Chuck Hoskin Jr., secretary of state of the Cherokee Nation, said Warren was “undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

“A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship,” Hoskin said. “Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong.”

He added, “It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven.”

Yaateeh shi buddy wrote:

+1

That’s exactly right. Lived on the Navajo nation from 2011-2015. Most Navajo kids are now fat like the average American kid. There is still a lot of talent but generally social issues (dropping out of college, pregnancy, family problems etc) keep kids from reaching their potential. Without family stability and support which we often take for granted, it won’t happen.

As an aside, there was a group of runners from the Jemez Pueblo tribe that dominated stair climbs and trail running in the 70s/80s.

Yes, that would be Steve Gachupin, Jose Tosa, and Al Waquie you're referring to. Between them they won the Pikes Peak Marathon, the La Luz Trail Race, and the Empire State Building Run-Up (in addition to many other races) numerous times.

I had the pleasure of competing against Waquie more than once in the 80s.

Going back further, Lewis Tewanima, who was a Hopi Carlisle School teammate of Jim Thorpe, won silver in the 10,000 at the 1912 Olympics. He was also a 1908 Olympian, where he finished 9th in the marathon.

And Patty Dillon (formerly Patty Lyons Catalano) has Micmac heritage, albeit from Canada.

victim groups fighting each other for victimization status

lol