Is there really only one sub 5 miler per HS on average? That seems low.

my hs has around 15-20

Our Hs of 1500 kids has about 15 per year. When they say 1 per high school, it isn't 1 per grade which makes that number seem even more off. Even small high schools of 250 kids should have 2-3.

I coach in a 6 team league of high schools with 9-12 enrollments of 240. so slim pickings.

This year, there are probably 4 kids in the league with a sub 5 mile. I have one. I typically average 3 per year. With 30 boys per class, I can live with that. There are way too many kids who play soccer, basketball, and volleyball year round.

But the majority of schools are much bigger. i would expect better numbers from decent sized schools.

I believe there are thousands of very small high schools (fewer than 300 students). Many of them have zero runners that fast, which isn't surprising, statistically.

Lots of kids run track for fun and socializing with friends.

Most high schools don't have a dedicated distance coach. High schools on average are small. When you are at a small school there is little reason to be a fast miler, especially if you don't have a motivating coach. There's poor inner city schools, schools that don't sponsor track, there's performing art schools, schools without anywhere to run. There's tons of reasons to not ever have anyone try to run that fast, and it's really no surprise that most schools don't. If no one at your school runs that fast, why ever try to be that fast? Most people don't push the status quo on their own.

LRBF_theRealOne wrote:

Most high schools don't have a dedicated distance coach. High schools on average are small. When you are at a small school there is little reason to be a fast miler, especially if you don't have a motivating coach. There's poor inner city schools, schools that don't sponsor track, there's performing art schools, schools without anywhere to run. There's tons of reasons to not ever have anyone try to run that fast, and it's really no surprise that most schools don't. If no one at your school runs that fast, why ever try to be that fast? Most people don't push the status quo on their own.

yup. we've had the best milers in the league most of the last 10 years. Not a coincidence that it's my top priority.

We had a really bad program. Most kids ran about about 15-20 miles per week with no speed training and didnt run in the offseason. Its hard for the average kid to run sub 5 off hgt hat training. Had we had decent coaching, I think there would have been 2-3 in every grade

I would think any high school of more than 150 kids should have at least one boy who can break 5:00. That's a reasonable mile time for any moderately athletic boy to run.

My school was large, but we had probably 15ish or more boys who could do that. It's hard to say because some of them were soccer players or basketball players (who played tennis in the spring) who time trialed 1600m times like 5:14 in trainers. I have to think those guys could run under 5:00 just by spiking up and being put in a real race.

I realized that I have better example of why this is unbelievable. Our school has not had a year in the last 10 years in which at least one 8th grader did not break 5 minutes. We have less than 400 8th graders. Some years, we have a 7th grader do it. If at least 1 out of every 400 8th graders does it, certainly 1 out of 100 high schoolers can easily do it.

It's got a lot to do with coaching and interest, as well as size of the school.

Good coaching will generate interest. Athletes that would otherwise be playing soccer, baseball, tennis, basketball, curling, or something else will run if they can find success. But those guys and gals will stick with the team sports unless there is a good program where they can be successful.

When I came through HS we had a decent coach. He generated interest and we had some good athletes take up running. I was a baseball guy that got converted to running after I won a mile in PE...

With decent coaching the program got better - we made states in xc, almost won a track title (second). At one point, had 6+ kids running sub-5:00 and a couple more really close (not bad for the late 1990's). That coach left for another state and the program declined. I don't think anyone has broken 5:00 at my old HS for many years. It's sad because this is a really big high school.

I think (guessing of course) that small schools have a harder time because good athletes have a lot more opportunities with traditional team sports.

I agree with folks above that there are lots of students that have the talent (i.e. the 5:14 basketball/tennis dude) to break 5:00, and most that could do it with little training never do.

There are schools with no sub 5 milers. My HS has had 1 sub 5 miler in 25 years.

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

There are schools with no sub 5 milers. My HS has had 1 sub 5 miler in 25 years.

Alan

Ouch. How big was your HS?

If you coach HS boys and you don’t have at least one sub 5 guy on your team you should quit and never coach again

How is that possible? We have at least one 8th grader every year and 15 high schoolers. We typically have 1 sub 4:20 and probably 5 sub 4:35. We have never made it to NXN and our team did not finish top 10 in the state last fall.

Some schools might have a few sub5 minute milers but they would be listed as zero. There are probably a couple basketball players or soccer players who can run 4:59 but almost nobody knows it and they don’t do it because they aren’t on the track team.

And there are schools in our conference I think with similar statistics.

What's funny is only 3 broke 5 at sectional this year and there are some pretty big schools there.

https://www.ihsaa.org/Portals/0/boys%20sports/track/2020-21/2020-21%20Jeffersonville%20Sectional.pdf

Alan

it is surprising how many schools simply have crappy programs - even some big ones. a school in a big suburb of my city that i helped with coaching a few years ago had about 1600 students 9-12. maybe more. they had two fast boys and then the rest of their ragtag distance squad struggled to get to that 5:00 barrier. a high school two towns over of about the same size probably had 15 or 20 sub 5. different schools with different cultures and programs.

Why are you only counting public High Schools? There's a lot of private High Schools too.

In Michigan (home of Hobbs Kessler, if you've heard of him) this year athletic.net (used extensively in our state) lists 1005 HS runners that broke the 5 minute barrier, and according to Google we've got 1800 high schools, give or take. So yeah, less than one per school is common, but I'm guessing many of those high schools are tiny.

Less than 30 8th graders broke the 5 minute barrier in our whole state this spring, so maybe you're in a state with better weather for running?

The school where I coach had no one under 5 in the mile this year for the first time in recent time, but we also had no veteran HS distance runners on the team, and basically an 8 week long season (thanks to Covid delays and shut downs.) We had 3 guys under 5:05, but none could break that magical mark. There weren't a lot of sub-5 guys in our conference or region this year either, I blame the pandemic.

Historically I've only had 8 guys on my team (school has around 500 kids) go sub 5 in the past decade, but I've also had a girl go sub 5 during that time period too, and two others go sub 5:10. Talent comes and goes in streaks.