Do all sports favor the big kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swimming (college recruiting) also favors tall and of course long limbs.

Swim recruiting is about times. While it is true that being taller is often an advantage and may lead to faster times, college coaches are not recruiting based on height or limb length - they are recruiting based on times (and demonstrated trajectory).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimming (college recruiting) also favors tall and of course long limbs.

Swim recruiting is about times. While it is true that being taller is often an advantage and may lead to faster times, college coaches are not recruiting based on height or limb length - they are recruiting based on times (and demonstrated trajectory).

Nah has was eloquently exposed in the follow ups to the Varsity Blues sting most of the non-money sports filter started finding ways to filter kids at much younger ages so that poor kids don't have a chance to get times.

https://time.com/6100715/varsity-blues-trial-college-sports/

They used to be able to reliably cheat, even if they didn't have the times or whatever the coaches would just take a kick back, but now they have to have the times so they make it so that poor families can't get their kids into the programs at all.

[Anonymous]

Crew also favors tall kids, and it's deeply weird to me that a sport that crams 9 kids in a small boat would want those kids to be tall. Go figure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, look at professional athlete average heights and that will tell you how college and high school coaches are biased.

According to Google, the sports below are essentially the only pro sports where the average height for men and women is less than 5'10" and 5'8", respectively:

Marathoners
Gymnasts (many argue that the sport itself is partially responsible for keeping gymnasts small and that many would have grown taller if they had not started the sport so young)
Ski Jumpers
Lightweight to lower bands of Middle Weight for basically any sport specifically built around weight: boxing, UFC, wrestling, et al (i.e., people are mentioning wrestling here, but you won't find many short wrestlers at heaviest weight classes)
Female ice skaters...average for men is 5'10"

Are male singles figure skaters tall? I would think that the average for men is influenced by the presence of male pairs skaters, who definitely need to be relatively big (to lift their partners).

Nathan Chen - 5'6. Ilia Malinin - 5'9. Evan Lysacek - 6'2. They are all lean and powerful - very good power to weight ratio. Strong but not broad upper budder. Body types of a ballet dancer or cyclist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crew also favors tall kids, and it's deeply weird to me that a sport that crams 9 kids in a small boat would want those kids to be tall. Go figure.

It's all about the physics of levers, just like long limbs help pitchers in baseball/softball. You want that leg drive to be as long and explosive as possible.

Except for the coxswains, then you're looking to keep it under that min weight and put a few sandbags in so you hit it exactly. But of course coxing is a skill, not really an athletic endeavor.

-former coxswain

[Anonymous]

Now I'm curious about the height of high school baseball pitchers. My child is on the taller side at 6'2" but honestly I see a wide variety of heights in pitchers, including some short ones.

DS has average velo and lots of the faster pitchers so far are definitely shorter than he is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now I'm curious about the height of high school baseball pitchers. My child is on the taller side at 6'2" but honestly I see a wide variety of heights in pitchers, including some short ones.

DS has average velo and lots of the faster pitchers so far are definitely shorter than he is.

My kids are softball pitchers so it's a little different, but my understanding is the shorter pitchers have to perfect their mechanics at an even more obsessive rate to overcome the shorter limbs. Or perhaps these overall shorter pitchers happen to have proportionately short torsos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now I'm curious about the height of high school baseball pitchers. My child is on the taller side at 6'2" but honestly I see a wide variety of heights in pitchers, including some short ones.

DS has average velo and lots of the faster pitchers so far are definitely shorter than he is.

My kids are softball pitchers so it's a little different, but my understanding is the shorter pitchers have to perfect their mechanics at an even more obsessive rate to overcome the shorter limbs. Or perhaps these overall shorter pitchers happen to have proportionately short torsos.

Longer arms are a huge advantage in ball throwing sports. It's the distance the ball spends in their hand during the throw. The ball can spend overall more time accelerating. This has several advantages. A) More time accelerating, faster overall velocity. B) Even if the shorter arm compensates there is more time to control the ball in a less explosive throw. C) If the shorter arm manages to compensate, there is a higher likelihood of injury because there are more forces involved.

In addition: longer arms will likely have more overall muscle mass to bring to bear. The smaller pitcher may be able to do more pushups, but at the end of the day the ball is the same size so if I am 220lbs and I do a pushup, it takes much more power to do so than a 180lb person. I think this where many short people make about tall athletes. They tend to quantify speed, but often times it's power and tall athletes' power is often off the charts. I really realized this taking spinning classes where they measure it, I have to push like twice as many watts as the instructor recommended just to get a workout. But the way that translates to cycling, taller/bigger riders are better for sprints and track riding, but for mountain climbing smaller riders are better.

So higher speeds, more control and less risk of injury more muscle mass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now I'm curious about the height of high school baseball pitchers. My child is on the taller side at 6'2" but honestly I see a wide variety of heights in pitchers, including some short ones.

DS has average velo and lots of the faster pitchers so far are definitely shorter than he is.

There is a very clear advantage to height and limb length for throwing.

Short pitchers in HS are one thing since the average HS varsity pitcher isn't a flame thrower. They are exceedingly rare in major college programs or professional baseball.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now I'm curious about the height of high school baseball pitchers. My child is on the taller side at 6'2" but honestly I see a wide variety of heights in pitchers, including some short ones.

DS has average velo and lots of the faster pitchers so far are definitely shorter than he is.

My kids are softball pitchers so it's a little different, but my understanding is the shorter pitchers have to perfect their mechanics at an even more obsessive rate to overcome the shorter limbs. Or perhaps these overall shorter pitchers happen to have proportionately short torsos.

Longer arms are a huge advantage in ball throwing sports. It's the distance the ball spends in their hand during the throw. The ball can spend overall more time accelerating. This has several advantages. A) More time accelerating, faster overall velocity. B) Even if the shorter arm compensates there is more time to control the ball in a less explosive throw. C) If the shorter arm manages to compensate, there is a higher likelihood of injury because there are more forces involved.

In addition: longer arms will likely have more overall muscle mass to bring to bear. The smaller pitcher may be able to do more pushups, but at the end of the day the ball is the same size so if I am 220lbs and I do a pushup, it takes much more power to do so than a 180lb person. I think this where many short people make about tall athletes. They tend to quantify speed, but often times it's power and tall athletes' power is often off the charts. I really realized this taking spinning classes where they measure it, I have to push like twice as many watts as the instructor recommended just to get a workout. But the way that translates to cycling, taller/bigger riders are better for sprints and track riding, but for mountain climbing smaller riders are better.

So higher speeds, more control and less risk of injury more muscle mass.

Yes.

It's the reason most MLB players are huge. Swinging a bat and throwing a ball is much easier when you're 6'2, 220 lbs and have long limbs and torso to generate power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimming (college recruiting) also favors tall and of course long limbs.

Swim recruiting is about times. While it is true that being taller is often an advantage and may lead to faster times, college coaches are not recruiting based on height or limb length - they are recruiting based on times (and demonstrated trajectory).

Nah has was eloquently exposed in the follow ups to the Varsity Blues sting most of the non-money sports filter started finding ways to filter kids at much younger ages so that poor kids don't have a chance to get times.

https://time.com/6100715/varsity-blues-trial-college-sports/

They used to be able to reliably cheat, even if they didn't have the times or whatever the coaches would just take a kick back, but now they have to have the times so they make it so that poor families can't get their kids into the programs at all.

Poor kids already get the low income preference. They can't have them all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimming (college recruiting) also favors tall and of course long limbs.

Swim recruiting is about times. While it is true that being taller is often an advantage and may lead to faster times, college coaches are not recruiting based on height or limb length - they are recruiting based on times (and demonstrated trajectory).

Nah has was eloquently exposed in the follow ups to the Varsity Blues sting most of the non-money sports filter started finding ways to filter kids at much younger ages so that poor kids don't have a chance to get times.

https://time.com/6100715/varsity-blues-trial-college-sports/

They used to be able to reliably cheat, even if they didn't have the times or whatever the coaches would just take a kick back, but now they have to have the times so they make it so that poor families can't get their kids into the programs at all.

Poor kids already get the low income preference. They can't have them all.

This is why the poor but good athletic kids in money sports won the NCAA and now they don't have to subsidize your elitist sports (unless they are girls) and they get paid for their effort. The athletic departments then proceeded to cut many of the other programs that the good athletes in competitive sports were subsidizing.

[Anonymous]

As my high school's basketball coach used to say, "you can't teach tall." (that said, there were always a couple of players hovering around 5'6-5'8 on the team)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As my high school's basketball coach used to say, "you can't teach tall." (that said, there were always a couple of players hovering around 5'6-5'8 on the team)

Those were the kids with rock star personalities and super human work ethic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As my high school's basketball coach used to say, "you can't teach tall." (that said, there were always a couple of players hovering around 5'6-5'8 on the team)

Those were the kids with rock star personalities and super human work ethic.

Yep, they sat at the end of the bench next to the tall kids that hadn't finished growing or developing and the water boy/team manager that was going to go to medical school and major in sports medicine.