[Panther Thunder]

What I notice about a lot of the Talent from the Mountains is they have an obvious speed, size, and ability advantage when they are in middle school and early high school, but by the time they become seniors this advantage is no longer present..... Anyone want to speak on this?

I believe that in any area, the youths that mature faster will have a decided advantage in athletics compared to those that have maturing to do. But once EVERYONE matures, the playing field will even. And those that matured early are so used to dominating or excelling that they do not realize everyone else will catch up eventually. They should be training just as hard to try to use the early maturation as an advantage in being able to train harder at an earlier age, thus being able to do more in the future as well.

There are countless examples of kids I played with that matured faster and were the best, but did not have the same work ethic as others in high school ball and were either caught or passed up. Not that they were not talented, because they were, but they just did not establish a work habit early because it wasn't really necessary.

With a few exceptions, the old saying will eventually hold true, "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."


(As far as this being a geographical thing, who knows what factors go into it. Maybe diet, culture, and genetics are factors that could be causes.)