Here’s Jonah finishing off a local 5K race over Memorial Day weekend. 19.31 minutes. Not bad for a 14-year old. Actually, it was pretty excellent. He finished right after the Ethiopians.
In this race, Jonah may have been the second or third guy from our town to finish the race. The top twenty were travelling professional runners.
Yes, there are people who make a living by competing in local races. These races offer small pots of money to the winners, usually about $500. But I guess if you do two or three of these races per weekend, you can make a nice living. They are probably also sponsored by sneaker companies.
Professional running isn’t in my son’s future. He has the talent, but zero passion for the sport. (He did earn $10.) Well, one’s knees only hold out for so long.
UPDATE: My smart commenters tell me that I’m wrong. Now, I want to do some research on this topic.
Apt. 11d 
That’s a great time for anybody, let alone a 14 year-old.
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That is a seriously fast time — but, it doesn’t motivate him to want to do more? My kids are seriously motivated by winning/noting their excellence. I worry, sometimes, too much, because you don’t have to do something *just* because you are good at it. Fortunately, they don’t fall into the reverse trap, of not doing something if they are not excellent at it (the Dweck failure mindset, that inhibits children from taking the risks required to learn).
What motivates different children in their learning and training?
I’ve been thinking about the issue of motivation, reading the Dweck papers (Dweck is the fixed/mutable mindset psychology researcher whose theories have become popular in the popPsycEd field) and it is becoming clear to me that motivators work very differently for different children and that it is difficult to navigate the right motivation for a particular child (while also motivating all the other children). My kids want to know how well they are doing at an activity and how it compares to others. They are motivated when they do well, but they are not hopelessly discouraged when they are mediocre and even when they do poorly. But generalized praise without an understanding of how well a task can be done does not encourage them to put forth their best effort. I have seen their level of performance ramp up when they’ve gone off to national venues and seen how well others of their age can complete a task.
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You can not make a good living doing this kind of work. I work a person who is an elite runner, on an actual sponsored running team where she gets a monthly stipend, who runs these kinds of races and she still needs to have a full-time job. Very few runners–even the best of the best–have shoe sponsorships and they don’t pay that well. Most people are able to do it because they have a spouse or partner with a well paying full-time job. Coworker’s friend is a legitimate professional runner (first at nationals this year, top five at worlds, many sponsorships) and she makes about $60k a year.
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Yeah. Prefontaine lived around poverty level in a trailer at the height of his career. I read an in interesting article awhile back on why the best runners are from East Africa. Setting aside genetics, most people from first world countries simply don’t want to put in the work it takes to be an elite runner for that little pay off. Doing well internationally provides enough to live pretty decently in a developing country, and alternative career choices are probably dismal. Not so in Europe and America.
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Agreed, my brother is a top amateur triathlete (has some corporate sponsorships and has placed in top 10 overall and finished 1st in amateur standings in several Ironmans) and he has a full-time job. And a wife who makes significantly more and funds his dreams. He makes almost no cash money, but gets a lot of shoes, bikes, gear, etc.
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huh. OK. I stand corrected. I wonder if I could turn this into an article (after I do a little research).
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My slacker son is not motivated by something that comes too easily to him and that isn’t particularly valued by his peers. His time would have been faster, if he hadn’t stopped in the middle of the race to flirt with some girls who were cheering on the sidelines.
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Comes too easily is an interesting anti-motivator. One of the ideas from Dweck’s studies is that there is a tendency for “fixed mindset” personalities to believe that they are *not* good at something if they have to work at it, and thus, are unwilling to work at something in order to be good. In stead, they only want to work on tasks that come easily to them (again, so they don’t take risks with difficult tasks).
Interesting that running fast is not a cool-teen-culture trait. So soccer? or football? How do the other sporting activities rank with respect to attracting the flirting?
If I were going to pick, I’d be a swim groupie (if I were suddenly a teen girl, but still me, otherwise, it is creepy). I went to a swim meet last year, and I was thinking in my head, how the swimmers looked, like greek god paen’s to summer (they were golden in the golden hours before sunset. The girls were not as visually dramatic, because they wear so much clothing when they swim, and I’m turning photographer here), when other mothers near me started talking about the phenomenon. The conversation stopped just before it started to sound like creepy old women.
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19.31 is a promising time for a 14 year old, but if he needs motivation, tell him D1 colleges won’t start paying attention unless he can run a sub 15 minute 5K.
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But, is attracting the attention of a D1 really worth anything? in, as we now know, a “non-helmet” sport for a boy. Folks chase that kind of thing around here, because, they think, correctly, that they might be able to attract the attention of a D1 like Stanford, or the Stanford of the East :-). But that doesn’t seem to be a motivator for 11D.
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Stanford of the East. heh.
I’ve heard that colleges look especially favorably on x-country runners and crew-type people, because they think that endurence on the field translates to endurence in studies. Not sure about that. Just parent gossip.
We’re not chasers of D1 schools around here. And there’s only so much that I can push the slacker son.
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I would have thought that a scholarship at an already affordable D1 school like Michigan would be just what 11D wanted. We have some friends who could definitely afford Michigan (or for that matter Harvard, though their son might not be quite at the level academically), but they were quite pleased to have their running star son get in there and save them some tuition.
P.S. I would have stopped in the middle of the race too. What’s the point in any activity if it doesn’t get you girls?
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I often think of D1 colleges as Jock Schools, but I shouldn’t do that. There are many good ones on that list.
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Almost 10 year old article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/sports/16haverford.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Nevertheless, sports talent is a large factor in college admissions. Recruited athletic talent, that is. Coaches have major pull for athletes they are interested in. However, athletes must pass academic muster (which level may well be lower than the rest of the student body.)
Academic Index: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html?action=click&module=Search®ion=searchResults&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%23%2Fathletic%2Brecruiting%2Bcollege%2F
See Bowen, Reclaiming the Game, chapter 3, for more information.
We do know students recruited from schools to play at college. Some of those students (we suspect) were recruited because their academic talent could raise the team’s GPA and test scores.
Athletic talent is a large and sticky topic. If you qualify for need-based financial aid at Harvard and its ilk, for example, remember that no athlete at the Ivies receives an athletic scholarship. Thus, if an athlete attends a college, but decides he’d rather join the Political Union, he doesn’t lose his scholarship. So, at those schools, I’d assume part of the recruiting dance is assuring the coach you are interested in competing. (Look at Harvard’s fact sheet for financial aid before deciding you wouldn’t qualify: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works/fact-sheet)
Boys who are slackers as freshmen may get more serious as they mature. We know of students who were committed to play lacrosse at college during sophomore year (and I don’t know if it was a signed contract, or a verbal commitment. Both sides regarded it as binding, apparently. ) For certain sports, there are important summer camps at which players can show off for college coaches. I don’t think running has that, as the times are what matters.
But, potentially, being a competitive runner could make a huge difference in the cost of college. It could make a difference in the sort of merit scholarships offered, particularly if you are willing to send your son far away for college. NCAA recruiting is a complicated topic. The recruiting starts early for many sports. Kids know what they like by the end of junior year.
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It makes me nauseous that athletic ability gets kids into colleges, not academic promise. WTF is wrong with this country?
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Academic promise counts, too. One could argue that athletic ability should count for nothing, but it’s a strawman to argue that academic promise doesn’t count. One can be the equivalent of a recruited athlete in academics (Intel/Siemen’s science fair winners, Math Olympiad champions, . . . .). True the process is different, and there are no “commitment letters” and the like. But, apparently those people get “likely” letters ahead of final decisions, too.
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“I often think of D1 colleges as Jock Schools, but I shouldn’t do that. There are many good ones on that list.”
Including, I must note, the 2013 NCAA Mens Division I Hockey Champion. Really, it’s a good school academically too.
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P.S. That said, I actually agree with Wendy.
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As I learn more through shepherding various children through the process–and observing how their friends fare–I’m not as disturbed by it as I once was.
That said, yes, definitely the boost in admissions for athletic talent is out of proportion. People get all upset about affirmative action and legacy admissions, but the scale and scope of the admissions advantage for athletes are far greater.
Academic performance is a huge factor. A good student, with good grades and test scores, can get scholarships. Here’s a start: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1461983-competitive-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html. Many of those scholarships include a social portion, that is, a final stage interview with a committee. Intimidating to many adults, let alone teenagers. However, a charming child who thinks fast on her feet, and has everything else to offer, can do well. I don’t think it’s possible to “tiger mother” a child into one of these scholarships, as personality really counts.
Some of the competitive scholarships above require the student’s high school to nominate him/her. Some, for example the Morehead, I gather the school has to be allowed to nominate the student. If you’re in a Northeastern state, and willing for your child to travel away from home for college, it might be worthwhile to ask the school to nominate your child for a scholarship he/she 1) has a chance for, and 2) doesn’t have local competition.
Some colleges offer need-based financial aid, such as the Ivy League. Thus, that is effectively an academic scholarship, even if the student is also an athlete.
I just keep running into families and students in our circle of acquaintance who rank a college’s “social” factors as very important. They might call it “school spirit.” They want their teams to win, or at least not always lose. There are some quite good colleges which really emphasize their sports teams to visiting high school students. From discussions with other parents, yes, noncompetitive teams would be a real drag on a college’s popularity.
I don’t approve of professionalizing college sports–which has already had such terrible effects on middle school sports. I must admit, though, that supply and demand plays a big role. Many consumers, i.e., tuition-paying parents, do want their children to have a “real college experience.”
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