I closely follow high-school running in my home state of New Hampshire, and manage to stay on top of the rest of the New England prep scene as well (the latter partly by default; interstate competition is frequent in neighboring states that are all practically small enough to fart across on a clear, dry day). Now that I seem to have settled in Colorado permanently, I keep tabs on the kids here as well. But I'd like to think I'd be paying attention to Colorado high-school running anyway, because there are some notable things happening here at both the once-in-a-generation level and the top-ten-in-the-U.S. level. While Colorado appears to be enjoying an unusually strong ripple, I think the reasons for this are manifest in the rest of the country as well, and that these reasons fairly easily explain why we're seeing about the same number of superhero-level outliers as before, but quite a few more kids in the "extremely good" range.
At the Liberty Bell Invitational at Heritage High School south of Denver last weekend, an affair that ranks among the biggest regular-season cross-country events in the state if my guess is close, both the boys' and girls' already impressive course records were broken. Cole Sprout of Valor Christian, arguably the top prep runner in the country, ran 14:38 to break the 2007 mark by 13 seconds, while junior Sydney Thovaldson, now considered the second-most-influential woman in Wyoming behind Liz Cheney but overwhelmingly the more popular of the two, erased Brie Oakley's 16:43 standard from 2017 by three seconds. The finish line of this course reportedly sits at 5,466' above sea level.
I'll delve into the influences of the physical setting as a whole on the times at this event, but as a glance at the winners through 2015 reveals, some very talented athletes have raced at LBI in its forty-one year history. When future Olympian Adam Goucher of Doherty (Colorado Springs) broke the course record by over 18 seconds in 1993, the same fall he proceeded to rip a 14:41 to win the Foot Locker National title in San Diego, his blistering new mark was "only" 15:05. The next kid to get within even 15 seconds of Goucher's time was Brent Vaughn, who recorded a 15:16 in 2002 and went on to run 9:05 for 3,200 meters the next spring, a time that stood as the state record until quite recently and is now decisively held by Sprout. The next year, Ryan Deak of Smoky Hill of Aurora, at one time a veritable talent factory, was the first to break fifteen minutes (14:58); in 2007, Kevin Williams, who'd go on to reach FLN and run 8:51 for two miles at sea level the following spring, notched the 14:51 that had stood until Saturday.
On the girls' side, the erratic nature of the progression is even more evident. When Lize Brittin ran 17:50 at LBI in 1983, she broke the course record by 47 seconds, but the race was then only five years old, and it also may not have made her 17:34 the next fall seem as phenomenal as it proved to be, even if Lize did run those times in campaigns in which she placed 15th and 7th at FLN. Lize was the furthest thing from an open-road time-trialer as you'll ever find, so of her various course records from the 1980s, her LBI time would have looked the most vulnerable. But even as the race grew to include more and more out-of-state athletes, no one even came close. The first runner to go under 18:00 after Lize was Megan Kaltenbach of Smoky Hill in 2000 -- sixteen years later. In fact, Kaltenbach would win the race three times, with finishes of 17:40, 17:49 and 17:36.0. For good measure, in 2003, Katelyn Kaltenbach, also of never the hell mind because don't be a dumbass, ran 17:42 to put two extraordinarily hot sisters (as I would have seen them as a high-schooler, but not either in real time, when I was over 30, or now, when I am pushing 50) a total of about 31 seconds outside Lize's record in four combined tries.
As you can see from that PDF, which I won't link to again because I'm trying to get to the point as quickly as humanly possible before the missiles hit, the Smoky Hill sisters ushered in a new era (a phrase I just used on purpose because it should be abolished from the vernacular and is probably incorrect anyway) of faster winning times, but Lize's mark stood until 2011, when Eleanor Fulton broke it by less than a second. Then, one year later, Jordyn Colter of Cherry Creek (Denver) appeared to do the equivalent of hitting a baseball clear out of the old Tiger Stadium with a 17-flat. This meant that a record that had stood for 27 years and fallen by about half a second was now over half a minute in the dust. Colter would run 2:04.5 for the 800 and 4:41.1 for the mile as a senior in 2015, so anyone speculating that her record would stand for a good spell would have been reasonable. But in 2016, Lauren Gregory of Fort Collins ran an unbelievable 16:52 -- and lost the race by nine seconds to Oakley. You may remember Oakley running 10:09 to win the 2017 Colorado 5A 3,200m title (where Gregory ran 10:16; never, ever, ever again will a high-school girl finish second in 3,200-meter race at 5,560' with a time that fast, mark my or someone more reliable's words on that one) a few months after running 15:52 to set a national high-school indoor record in the 5,000m.
That sets the table for discussion of current events, now that I myself am sick of writing about them. I'm taking a break, but the rest will appear below the "Read more" link when I'm good and ready.
First, as fast as 14:38 is on any cross-country course at high altitude, I don't think Sprout was near red-lining. He ran 8:40.73 for 3200 meters in early April at the Arcadia Invite in California (leading for the first 3,150 meters and splitting 4:22/4:18) and 8:57.15 two weeks later at 5.560' elevation in a solo run at JeffCo Stadium in Lakewood, which neighbors Littleton. Sprout undoubtedly ended his spring season capable of dipping under 14:00 for 5,000 meters on the track, unless there's something unique about Sprout's ability to run ~8:00 for 3K compared to others who try the 5,000 meters.
Seven American high-school boys are credited with having broken 14:00 for 5,000 meters on the track. I say "credited with" because, to name one example of a broader phenomenon, Galen Rupp ran 13:37.91 -- a truly otherworldly time, by the way: 8:43 for 3200 meters plus another 1800 meters at that pace -- on July 31, 2004, after he graduated. I don't think this should count as high-school record, and not just because every record Rupp has is in my mind riddled with toxic question marks; as noted, a few others on the all-time lists have "tweeny" marks, too.
Assuming he's now as strong as or stronger than he was in April, that's worth 14:30 or so on a track in Littleton. But the Liberty Bell course, which is basically a road race, drops about 60' or 70' from the start to finish. That's probably gives back close to half of what the elevation takes away, making Sprout's Liberty Bell effort worth around 14:23. I know that's granting me a lot of stuff, but it's reasonable stuff and even if it's wrong, it's probably better than your guess. Seriously, what have any of you brought to this?
Anyway, people reported Sprout not looking like he was working that hard, including the official race cyclist. Even accounting for the fact that some people insist that this is true whenever they see any known elite quantity leading a race, or simply running, I think this is true here. Maybe the best evidence of this kid's unholy power is the way he ran that 8:57 in April. I watched the race video and had him at about 64, 69, 69. 68, 68, 69, 67, 63, all from the front. Those are actually very erratic for a performance that quick, especially one at high altitude. I think Sprout has about a 20 percent chance of breaking 8:30 for 3,200 meters and a 75 percent chance of breaking 8:40 for two full miles. I also predict that I'll remember to refer back to this post whatever happens with Sprout, but that I'll be more tiresome about it if these predictions are accurate.
Also at LBI, a relative no-name, Parker Wolfe, ran 14:47, an effort that broke the old mark but was completely eclipsed. While the course may be screaming fast for altitude, to be that close to Sprout under any circumstances makes him national-class overnight by any measure. He's only a junior, so his jump from an altitude 9:21 as a soph to this performance is impressive but not incredible. On the other hand, the kid who took third from Fort Collins in 15:09 recently came out of nowhere. If you have access, look at
As for Thorvaldson, she ran 35:59 at Bolder Boulder in May as a sophomore (finally breaking Lize's age-16 event record of 36:17 from 1983, when Lize was ninth overall in the women's race) and 10:01 for 2 miles at sea level the next month, so again, I bet she had more in the tank. Whether you come at it from her 10K time or her 2-mile time, she's probably capable of close to 16:10 on the outside on the track at sea level. That would give her 16:40-16:45 in Littleton, but if you knock off about 15 seconds at her pace for the elevation loss, that's 16:25-16:30. Therefore, she and Sprout may have been holding back by about the same 1 percent or a little more, which at that level is in fact a ton.
The real question is how fast the Liberty Bell course is compared to the courses that will be used for post-season sea-level races in the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) and FLN regional and national finals (NXN has siphoned off most of the best runners from the Foot Locker series, but it's possible to do both, I think, at least from some regions, or something). Lize ran almost the same time at Balboa Park in San Diego 1984 when she got 7th (17:36) as she had at Liberty Bell a few months earlier, and it's hard to read that because she's an altitude monster who gained little compared to others when moving to sea level and was extraordinarily good on hilly courses. Yet Goucher ran 24 seconds faster at FLN than he did at LBI, perhaps because he was just getting in shape for the latter as he was always famously injured even in high school. Sometimes. I would suggest that he took it easy because he was so far ahead at LBI in '93, but if you know anything about Adam Goucher, you know that the idea of not running absolutely balls-out in every competitive situation was an absolute laugh until far later in his career, when he realized he needed to subdue some of his Delta Force-caliber demons if he wanted any sort of long career.
Balboa Park is obviously more punishing than the results suggest; when you see ten girls in the range of 17:00 to 17:30 and ten boys between 14:55 and 15:20 and you think "That's great for that level," but in reality those kids have all run 16:30-17:00 or 14:30-14:50 somewhere else -- except the altitude kids. These days it's more common for kids to travel out of state for meets and therefore get a shot at sea-level times, for what that matters in cross-country.
In the intro, I said I would explain why I think a glut of faster times is being seen here and nationwide at the high-school level. I can sum it up in an unassailable way in two words: Youth programs. When I was a kid in the 1980s, there was no such thing as junior-high cross-country ("junior high" is a thing of the past and referred to schools serving 7th-, 8th- and 9th-grade students. Now we have "middle schools," with a phase shift toward younger grades so that more high schools actually have all of their students under one roof. Or something.
Anyway, we did have junior-high track, but no youth programs of any sort or suggestions for off-season training or any of that. And remember, this was pre-Internet, making the then-scarce sources of information on the topic as elusive as everything else was then. And I know this is mostly how it was everywhere else. Now, there are middle-school programs that aren't merely feeder programs but solid competitive entities in their own right. One of the reasons Concord High School and Coe-Brown Academy in New Hampshire are always so good is that the coach of a neighboring town that sends kids to both high schools is a fixture of infinitely long and intense standing who knows what he is doing and where the roads kids pick at this age tend to wind up, for better or for worse.
So to simplify (both the logic and the prose): Same genetic talent pool plus more kids participating in track combined with younger onset of legitimate training produces a few faster nuggets at the top, a lot more pretty great, regional-championship-caliber runners (say, 4:05/8:55 or 4:50/10:20) and too many okay runners, like I was, to count -- types who loved it enough to train year-round, mostly avoided injuries and getting sanctioned for bad behavior on and off the course, and were at least athletic enough to move in a straight line and make basic turns when required.
Look, for example, at the sheer number of boys under 16:00 in the feature race at LBI this year (28) and the number of girls under 19:00 (37) and compare these data to the list of historical winners, and I don't know what else accounts for the shift other than more people doing something better because they've had more practice and better guidance. I do think today's good coaches are better overall than their peers of the past, though this is largely owed to structural and technological factors working in favor of today's crop. Which leads roughly to...
...I could go on about how the Internet has helped scholastic running far more than it's hurt it, something you can't say about a great many other cultural and social realms. But that, as always, is a footnote and a quasi-promise I will likely never fulfill.