Disprove FM Girls Worsen in College

Very sad article published in 11/22 about FM's Christie Rutledge and other HS girls who train at a high level. She has been damaged for life, mentally and physically from her HS running. Awful stuff. She can't run anymore because of the damage, and has mental illness.

Christie Rutledge joined the modified Fayetteville-Manlius team in seventh grade before moving on to the high school team in ninth grade. During her first few years, Rutledge was admittedly slow. She would still be running as race organizers picked up the cones lining the racecourse thinking everyone had finished.
That changed under Aris. She enjoyed piling on the miles, and she loved life as a Stotan. In the summer before her junior year, she surprised everyone, including herself, when she won the intrasquad time trial. She had gone from being one of the slowest on the team to number one.

In 2010, Rutledge took second at Nike Cross Nationals, leading her team to a win with the lowest score in NXN history. In her interview, you can hear the joy in her voice as the wind whips through her straight brown hair, the braid leading into her ponytail still perfectly intact even after the grueling race. She describes that day as “euphoric.”
But Rutledge kept something to herself. Unintentional weight loss had reignited an eating disorder she’d first battled in middle school. After NXN, Rutledge’s parents realized something was wrong. They found mental health treatment for her, watched her eating closely, and weighed her every day.

A couple of months after her victory, Rutledge was on the last rep of a workout, 90 minutes with 90-second sprints, when she felt a sharp pain deep in her right hip. She limped back to her high school. Doctors couldn’t immediately diagnose the pain, and she had to sit out much of her senior year. Her parents didn’t know it, but she had started purging food to keep weight off, and by the time she started college at Dartmouth, she hadn’t had her period in three years.
“I think my coaches did a very good job for what they could do,” she says, citing Aris’s decision not to have her race cross country her senior year. But Rutledge is adamant that it’s important to build trust and pay close attention to young girls. “They don’t always say when they’re hurting.”

Rutledge, now 28, competed in only three meets at Dartmouth before having to seek treatment for her eating disorder. “I don’t regret my experience. I wish things had turned out differently,” she says. “In high school, everything seems like it’s the most important thing to be at the very top and to do everything you can to get there, but I do look back and think I would give anything to just be able to go out for a few-mile jog right now.”
Rutledge doesn’t run anymore. She wants to, but at least for now, she can’t. That hip pain turned out to be ischial tuberosity avulsion fractures, a relatively rare injury usually caused by strenuous exercise in teenagers. Years out, she’s not fully healed. Carter doesn’t run either. “It gives me anxiety to this day to go out for a run,” she says. About half of the women we spoke to struggle to run. They lost the joy of the sport.

runnersworld.com

Female High School Runners Say Unhealthy Training Pressure Is Pushing Them Beyond the Breaking Point

As more programs encourage young athletes to train like professionals, female runners report problems with restrictive eating, irregular menstrual cycles, and long-term bone damage.

Link:www.runnersworld.com/women/a41845898/h...

What is an FM girl?

A girl who runs or used to run for Fayetteville Manlius HS

I don’t know a lot about their program other than observation at meets and what I have heard. I have talked to Aria a couple of times but mostly about team culture. They are clearly happy kids.

There are signs they might be overtraining but I will not get into that because I am not sure.

New York has an advantage over neighboring states in that they can develop their athletes from middle school on through high school. As a coach I try to develop my talented athletes to a level they can get a scholarship and still leave some room for improvement. This has worked quite well as I have 8 former athletes running in college that have improved over what is considered to be excellent high school performances.

Yes, I could have been greedy and bumped their mileage up to 70-80, but my top runners maxed at 50-60.

If I was coaching in New York and had six years with an athlete maybe we would be at a higher volume given that we could make a healthy progression over a longer period of time. I don’t know though, as I never had the option to consider that.

I think the tough question is have these athletes progressed to their genetic potential early or are they burnt out? It’s really hard for anyone to answer that.

I disagree that they are "clearly happy kids" During their championship era their athletes rarely looked happy at track meets. I was at a lot of the meets, and they did not look happy that often. Actually at one point they followed the "stoic" philosophy of the stotans. It was weird to watch high schoolers like this. None of it was healthy - there are several other girls from that era that had huge issues after or while in the program. They just don't publicize it.

Tbf, it’s rare for the high school coach to also coach the modified team. Saratoga and FM regularly take advantage of middle schoolers but most schools are a lot more careful about bringing them up. My high school was fairly successful when I was there (NXN qualifier), and there were exactly two 8th-graders (no 7th-graders) that our coaches brought up to varsity early. Both of them had strong careers and ran D1 college, and I think both still run competitively to this day on the roads. It’s possible to have the best of both worlds. I will say, the part about low improvement being a product of good high school coaches is definitely true in my experience. There were a few slower runners that improved very well in college, but anyone who was actually on our varsity squad and training at the maximum allowed level in high school improved less than most of our peers. I bear no ill will towards my high school coaches for that; I probably wouldn’t have been a D1 runner without them. But if you overperform to your talent level in high school, you will appear to underperform in college. Even at Newbury this is apparent. Nico has improved since high school, but only about 15 seconds over the 3k and 25 over the 5k (assuming he would’ve run around 13:35 outdoors as a senior without COVID). However, he was so fast in high school, he’s still an incredibly good collegiate athlete. If he was an undertrained 14:35 guy in high school, he might not have gotten the opportunity to run at NAU, and might not be at his current level now. We would be lauding his improvement to 13:20-13:30, without knowing he had the potential to run 13:10 (what actually happened). It just looks bad when you’re a little worse than that. For example, Jace Aschbrenner has had a fine collegiate career, but normally you’d expect an 8:44 high schooler to run a bit faster than 7:56 after a few years at a powerhouse distance program. But that ignores the fact he would’ve been a 9:00 guy on your average high school team, and while an improvement to 8:00 for 3k would look better, it would be lesser than the 7:55 ability he has shown now.

Old thread but I think the premise is flawed. The main fact is that it is very rare to have an athlete that has the ability and can avoid the pitfalls inherent in the sport to go on to excel in college. Even top national high school performers and multiple state champions can disappear in college. The fact that a coach can run a top notched high school program does not mean they will ever coach an athlete capable of excelling on the D1 level. It is just the luck of the draw. Saratoga is another strong high school program but they have been fortunate enough go have alumni that have done very well in college, such as Nicole Blood and Kelsey Chmiel. But I don't think that means one program is better than the other. Just that it reflects the vagaries if the sport.