I’m trying to get an idea of how good the performances are of a 13 year old athlete of mine. Does anyone have links to results from US state meets in the 13-14 year old age?
At our first spring meet, she beat every other girl in every event she contested, including the 18 year olds. She’s not good enough to be competitive internationally, but she’s easily the best athlete I’ve coached at my high school of 150 students.
go to usatf.org and look at the results of the junior national olympics. A good 13yo girl will be running at least 13.0 and 26-27sec.
Be careful drawing any negative conclusions from what you see because results depend on:
1:How much training and what kind (sometimes endurance training affect the finish where a big drop in speed is normally seen but this may have a cost later)
2: How tall the athlete is or is going to be. Taller athletes normally mature later and a growth phase can wreak havoc on results.
Thank you for the link. Am I right in assuming that ‘Youth’ on this page is 13-14?
Anyone know of a similar link for Canada? I will look around. Our training conditions aren’t tremendously superb though…
-This is the only time she has ever run on a rubber track. It was the first time she has run in spikes, and it was her first track meet except for some elementary school days where they have a few events like the high jump, long jump, “sprint across the soccer field”, ball throw, and “run around the soccer field.”
-She has had 6 hours of training so far in her life.
-The temperature where I live hasn’t been above 14 Celsius in 2008.
-The nearest track is a 7 hour ferry ride away. We practice on a wet, uneven, spongy grass field that is always an inch long and thick with moss.
She is quite close to the 13.0 and 26-27 you mentioned.
I think she is fairly close to her full height. Considering what you mentioned Charlie, do you think this might mean her potential for improvement is less than girls who still have some growing to do, or were you just commenting that a growth spurt will retard improvement?
How tall is that? Sounds like there is lots of potential from what you’ve said.
I’m guessing she’ll settle around 5’5 or 5’6.
She ran 13.49, 28.23, and 62.0 seconds (lead leg of a relay), in that order in a 3 hour time period (timed finals). First two are FAT; 400m time is by my watch. She prefers to start from a crouch without blocks and she visibly rocked backward on all three starts.
She likes going for jogs on her own in the evening. She seems pretty good with distance but her body type is not that of a distance runner. Could these jogs have much impact on her sprinting. In CFTS you say younger sprinters should avoid volumes of jogging to avoid turning undetermined muscle fibres into slow-twitch.