MHSAA Track State Meet Qualifiers - M Commits
The MHSAA State T&F Meet is June 4th and there are a handful of M commits participating. As a former track guy, I thought some might be interested.
Ben Braden is seeded 12th in D1 in Discus as a junior.
The D1 100m has a few names of interest:
Kishon Wilcher, son of Cass Tech head coach and somewhat of an M recruit is seeded 3rd, behind two kids from Grand Rapids.
Delonte Hollowell is seeded 7th with a seed time of 10.7 and Justice Hayes is seeded 10th at 10.8. This is especially interesting to me since people have raved about Hayes' speed, and listed Hollowell's speed as a weakness, yet it looks like their speed is at worst comparable. They'll run against each other in a couple weeks, it will be interesting to see who comes out on top.
Terry Richardson is seeded 15th in the 200m with a time of 22.30. He's the 4th highest seeded junior.
I haven't found any other guys of interest (I expected to find Raymon Taylor and Thomas Rawls) but I'm still digging a bit so I'll keep you posted. Zettel is seeded 2nd in D2 for both shot and disc.
I also just found out that Dennis Norfleet, who is also being touted as speedy, was in Hollowell's heat for the 100m at regionals, and Delonte beat him by .32 seconds - a significant margin in the 100. Norfleet did not qualify for the state meet.
Speed in a 100M dash is not very relevant to football (unless you are Denard, and routinely break off 80 yd td runs). More important would be who is winning the race at the 10 and 20 meter marks.
And really fast guys win and go to states. Running in a straight line faster than anyone else is the definition of speed. 40 is a better football measure, but 100 is very relevant.
But being able to run in a straight line when well-rested, in shorts and a tank top, is quite different from wearing pads and a helmet and cutting in different directions when you're already fatigued. I would say that the 100 can potentially be a negative indicator (if a guy's speed is noticeably poor) but it's not guaranteed to be a positive one. There are a lot of guys that are fast but just don't have the hip flexibility to cut well. I think the shuttle run is more useful.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, if his 100m time is all we knew about Delonte. But we've been told he has good instincts, fluid hips and a very good vertical, but it was reported that his speed was an area of improvement. Since we know that he many of the other good cornerback traits, seeing that he also has very good straight line speed is certainly a bonus.
DISCLAIMER - this post was not intended to be a "Look Delonte Hollowell ran the 100m good so he must do cornerback good too" post. It was meant to show that we have a few future Wolverine who are good at running fast (a major part of football) including a guy who was downgraded by some because of speed concerns.
I'm sure this isn't true in all cases, but I always kind of assume that a 150 pound kid wearing 15 lbs. of equipment will be more hampered by it than a 200 pound kid wearing 15 lbs. of equipment. So that's something to consider.
I'm sure that's true to some extent, but so what? Delonte weighs more than 150 right now I'm sure, and I don't know any 200lb recruits we have coming in who can run a 100m without pads as fast as Delonte Hollowell. Your point would be more applicable if we had a 200lb recruit running step for step with him, but it doesn't look like we do.
Yes, my point is that while Delonte Hollowell might run a 10.7 without pads, he might be slowed down a half-second with pads on.
Meanwhile, Justice Hayes (who isn't 200 lbs., I know) might run a 10.8 now but only be slowed down .2 of a second.
Obviously, those are just random guesses, but it's something to keep in mind when looking at track speed vs. football speed.
But doesn't his tag about lack of high end speed not come from his tape but from his performance at couple of combines last year?
I don't know. I noted that from his tape, but maybe other people are basing it on his combine numbers.
I didn't realize you were referring to Hayes. But according to Scout (the page I'm on), there is an 18 pound difference between Hollowell and Hayes (164 and 182, respectively). I don't think that amount of weight is enough to make a difference, especially since Hayes' RB pads will weigh slightly more than Hollowell's tiny CB pads. At best, the difference here is negligible.
I'm just using those two as an example. The main point is that smaller players would likely be affected more by their equipment. Common sense would suggest that a tiny cornerback is going to be slowed down by his 15 pounds of equipment than a 300 pound lineman wearing 18 pounds of equipment.
So it's not out of the realm of possibility for Hollowell to have great track speed but slow down noticeably once the pads are on.
Ehhhh remember the Kyle Rudolph and Cam Gordan 100 meter or so race in the Notre Dame game last year. I would say it's a little relevant.
Assuming they can all play football, I will take speedy track stars all day long on my team.
What are you talking about? Jamal Charles,Chris Johnson, Jacoby Ford,Desmond Howard before Bo made him quit,James Jett,Tiki and Ronde Barber,andre johnson and santana moss and the list goes on and on.
EDIT: Im not saying that track stars = success because track speed and game speed are two different things but for the players that can put them together have had alot of success.
Zettel committed to Penn State. So I mean, good luck to the kid but I don't really care what he's doing anymore. Sorry if that sounds dickish
no, its acceptable hes a traitor and a going to be losing to us the next four years
How are the 1600 and 3200 fields?
Speed in the 100 is more dependent on exceptional acceleration than on just flat out top speed. It could be that Justice would beat Delonte in a 200 and a 400.
But for a CB especially, don't we primarily care about acceleration, not flat out top speed? The field is only 100 yards long.. So most of his runs are going to be bursts of acceleration, which would show in a 100 over a 200 or 400.
Obviously, a 40 would be even better, and that's why they're used as the primary speed indicators for football. IMO, this meet won't really show us too much of who will be fast on the field and who won't be.
which is why Delonte is faster in the 100.
and agony, and little else.
having run it for 4 years I can attest to this.
1) fast, but several guys on your team were a little faster (and so ran the 100/200)
<br>2) blessed (cursed) with decent lung capacity, allowing you to be good at the event when coach asked you to try it
<br>3) too competitive to quit
<br>4) not smart enough to break your legs by jumping out of the second floor of an apartment building where my friend lived and i wouldn't do too much damage besides the broken legs because it wasn't That high. I mean you
I was lucky enough to be a good enoughj sprinter than I didn't have to do the 400 more than a few times. I also think my coach realized that the quarter wasn't for me when I nearly died 330 meters into my leg of the 4x4.
The 800 is even worse. You're going almost as fast for twice as long.
to kill me as I was running the 400.
The 400 is the worst possible distance, but I'm coming at this from a long distance runner's perspective. I never had to actually run it outside of ladders and repeats in practice, but I would probably have hired someone to kill me if my coach thought I was good at it and asked me to run it "on the reg".
I also ran 300 hurdles which become 400 hurdles in college and also had the unfortunate opportunity to run the 800 in competition a couple of times. Both are at least on par with the 400.
Yeah, you're right. I ran the 300 hurdles in high school too - and I'd run the 400 any day before the 300 lows. The hurdles more than make up for the 100 meters you lose.
Well then my statement should be taken in context of never running hurdles as an event, certainly not for 300m.
Give me a forest preserve and an 8k any day of the week.
and I liked the 400 better than the 800. The 800 was literally like 2 full out 400's. The 1600 I could at least pace myself at the beginning.
Put too much stock in region to region discrepancies for our recruits. Regionals are hand timed and have a history of being wildly inaccurate (see: traverse city regional for the past five years). The only question I have is why Terry Richardson would be running the 200 instead of the 100. I wouldn't think, with his size, that he would have an advantage running the longer distance. Makes me think he has some strong legs, which is nice.
Are the meets still separated by class (it's been 15 years since I lives in MI, but I seem to remember that Class A, B, and C-D all had their own meets). If so, are the rankings listed for each athlete for their schools class?
Instead of by class, they're by division. So they take every MHSAA school who will have track as a varsity support, then divide that number into 4 even groups based on enrollment. The rankings are listed by the division their school is in
Not sure why you would use traverse city. They have had 1 of the last 3 regionals in div 1. That one was done with automatic timing, not hand time.
I am not sure if Thomas Rawls made the semis even in the regional.
That's strange, considering he qualified for states last year and even made it past the prelims.
I was looking forward to seeing him. I just didn't notice. A kid from heritage and west were by far the fastest. Rawls may have been there, but I didn't notice anything spectacular.
there is a difference between football speed and track speed, Everytime i see folks talking about track meets it always makes me think of Jerry Rice who everyone considered slow , always faced a double team and yet was always open.
The thing thats most amazing about Denard is not his top speed but his acceleration. When he decides to run he's 5-10 yard up field before people can turn their head.
As a former D2 college sprinter and DB...there is something to say about having track speed. It doesn't always transfer on the field, but speed is speed. 100m or 40 yards I don't think you will find much of a difference. A kid that runs in the 10 second range with FAT timing will have a decent 40 time. Besides, unless you are in the 10.5 range or lower with FAT timing NOT hand timing...you are a 400m runner anyways.
It is nice to have some recruits that qualified for the meet. Best of luck to all of them!