MaryMary wrote:
Mary Cain as a freshman has already established herself as a legend in high school distance running. The amount of talent she possess is mind boggling, not since Mary Decker have we seen this kind of talent in such a young female.
2:03.7 relay leg
4:17 1500m defeating Aisling Cuffe
and certainly could run sub 10 in 3200m
amazing range and one in a generation type athlete just like Mary Decker.
I think that title goes to Kim Gallagher, Kim didn't get a chance to run fast in a lot of individual races becasue she always ran a lot of relays and tripled at most meets. Kim's senior year, she was the anchor leg on the nation's top 4x4, 4x8 and DMR. In the 1982 Penn Relays 4x4 COA, Kim walked down Diane Dixon, a 51x 400m runner. Before Kim started H.S., she held ever age group record in every event she competed in, including relays. From memory, I can only recall Kim losing one race in 4 years of H.S. in an individual event and I think that was to Gina P who is now the coach at Villanova. (She was scary good!) Kim's 2 flat 800m was one of the few times she was able to focus on one race. At one point Kim was at or near the top of the list in the 800/1500/mile/3k/5k/4x8/DMR and if given the right opportunity she could have run 'much' faster in individual events. Even though she won 2 Olympic medals, she had a lot of regrets and her biggest one is that she did'nt get a chance to run a faster mile in H.S., which was actually her best event.
With that said, Kim is with out a doubt the most accomplished H.S. t&f athlete male or female and should be the athlete used for comparisions and not Mary Decker who focused primarily on individual events and open races. Also, Kim generally did not run for time, she usually got out front and ran whatever it took to win. One of reasons she liked relays was because she always got the baton way behind and was forced to run hard and she enjoyed walking people down. People use to always miss getting her relay splits becasue they would be so amazed watching her that they would forget to stop their watches.