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NCAA D1 Indoor Championships 2014

Post NCAAs: How old are they, really?

Post NCAAs: How old are they, really?

Mar 18, 2014 by Isaac Wood
Post NCAAs: How old are they, really?
The skeptics always come out when it comes to age in distance runners after a national championship. I decided it would be good to see how much of this argument we can research ourselves and so for all of the qualifiers in the distance races (800m and up) I did my best to look up their "age." 

The real question is for some of the athletes, are they really that old? Is it fair that some athletes are 25 and running at a very high level, beating the other runners that aren't even legally allowed to consume alcohol? These questions and more are answered in the tables below in the research that I did the past few days. 

In the table below I have listed as many as I could possibly find. Each athlete's age listed in days that way we don't think a 21 year old who turns 22 in 5 days and a recently turned 21 year old should be compared at the same level. 

Here are some of my initial takes on the research: 

1. I had no idea Sabrina Southerland of Georgetown was so young-only 6,660 days (18 yr 80 days), she was the youngest of the entire meet (distance runners included) by 300 days

2. Eli Kirk of UAB is still developing at an older age, 9,086 days(24 yrs 324 days) for a college student- she was the oldest of the meet. 

3. The highest finish by the youngest athlete in the field on the men's side was Ben Saarel of Colorado's 3rd place finish in the 3k. 

4. The state of Florida is producing some very quality 800m runners and they all run for the University of Florida. Andres Arroyo, Ryan Schrulle, Sean Obinwa all qualified in the 800, granted Schrulle was the only athlete that really competed at a high level in Albuquerque, but regardless, qualifying three in one event is legit. That either means Spangler or whoever their 800m coach is, is doing some quality work, or Florida should be the recruiting hub for all middle-distance coaches. 

5. Contrary to popular belief, BYU's Jared Ward who is often noted as looking quite old, was not the oldest runner in Albuquerque. Middle Tennessee State's Eliud Rutto is almost 100 days older than Ward-nearing 26 years old. On the topic of Ward, he overachieved--placing 4th in both 5k and 3k. 

6. Over the longer distances (3k-5k) the state of Texas was the most impressive as both Reed Connor and Parker Stinson qualified in both the 3k and 5k, Stinson placing 3rd in the 5k and Connor 8th. Both struggled over 3k the next day. 

7. Don't forget about New Jersey. Not sure if we can really count Ed Cheserek as being from New Jersey, but regardless of King Ches, New Jersey's own Morgan Pearson and Joe Rosa were solid in the 5k placing 5th and 10th, respectively. Also, in the 800m, Patrick Rono and Alvaro (A.J.) Chavez, respresented the state well as Rono finished 3rd, and Chavez was the last one out of the final. 

8. On the Women's side the New England area had a killer meet. Besides the 800m, the winners of the Mile, 3k, and 5k came from the North East. Emily Lipari of Villanova who is from New York had a crushing kick in the Mile and Abbey D'Agostino of Massachusetts dominated once again in the 3k and 5k. John Gregorek of Columbia who is from Massachusetts and Will Geoghegan of Dartmouth who is from Maine, were 5th and 6th in the mile, respectively. 

9. Don't forget about Utah. Yes I'm biased, oh well. The contingent from Utah (Shalaya Kipp of Colorado, Ben Saarel of Colorado and Jared Ward of Utah) scored a combined 18 points at the meet. For a state of not even 3 million people--that's impressive, bias or not.

Editor's Note: Some athletes just have their high school graduation year or when they entered the NCAA listed below. If you can help complete the chart, feel free to leave a comment.

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