Where were they as freshmen?
This is a fun little "how it started/how it's going" table we're able to generate and as these seniors close their door on their high school career it's fun to look back at how it started. Only four seniors were sub 17 as freshmen and only a handful more were within 10 seconds of doing so. Almost all had an effect on how the medals and titles were distributed last week. The worst place any of the runners who broke 17 as a freshman and ran last week received was 3rd. The worst anyone who was under 17:10 as a freshman placed was 14th. It really is an incredible batting percentage and if I could spend more time on correlating the date I bet we could create a model for predicting a runner's career trajectory from their freshman set of performances.
With that said, not everyone who made All-State this year had such star studded beginnings. Take Siegel's Brennan Thomas for instance. As a freshman he didn't run varsity. He barely broke 19. As a sophomore he ...