Old FM Kid wrote:
The Eastern States meet being the 'big meet' is only partially correct. By the mid-1990s, the girls Eastern States meet was combined with the Manhattan College Invitational. So fast times (sub 13:00) were routinely at Manhattan College invite by then.
As far as course conditions, it was 1999 or so when they changed the conditions at Van Cortlandt. It became significantly faster with the repacking of the trails, removal of many of the treacherous boulders, and in some places a widening of the trail.
My experience in that regard is having run there 3 times in high school (95-97) and then running there every year while I was competing in college... and boy was it faster!
IMHO, the 5-man records prior to 1999 are one group, and after that are another group. I don't think it is particularly useful to try and estimate just how much faster it got. Just know that it got noticeably faster, enough that a meaningful comparison is not really there anymore.
Also, when we ran the 13:00.28 in 1997, we were aware that the previous record was from the 1970's and it was a CBA record. There also was, supposedly, a fast CBA Syracuse team back in the 1970's. I've got no first-hand evidence of either record, but it was talked about to us by one of those old guys when we got our medals. You know, those guys who believe they can make up random rankings of HS teams and write self-promoting newsletters that they charge people money for...
CBA Syracuse never held the record. My earlier post was 100% correct.