What's considered a bad, average, good, really good mile time for a high school girl?

It's hard to get at an average because most of the girls on the track team are self-selected and above average. I mean, I wouldn't say the "average" high school girl can run a mile in 10 minutes. At my daughter's high school the ones who ran close to 5 minutes (but over) got scholarships at Vanderbilt and Furman and the one who were just under 6 went to Western KY and Southern Indiana (maybe or maybe not with scholarships).

Look at the post season results in your state. The ones qualifying to state are very good. The ones making it to regionals but not state are good. The ones not making it out of districts are average for varsity level runners.

If you believe you are capable of racing one mile sub-7:30, go out for track & field unless you are a really good golfer or really good tennis player or really good softball player. Please note: in some states, female hs tennis is in the fall so if you are in one of those states, ignore my tennis comment.

track4thew wrote:

I'm looking specifically for ranges. I'm curious what is considered "good" and "really good" as well as "average." Is average like 5:50-6:10, good: 5:30-5:50, and very good under 5:30, especially under 5:20? What do you guys think?

I would give a bigger range than that. Average is pretty much anything over 6 minutes. 5:30-6:00 is pretty good. 5:00-5:30 is quite good, you should look into running in college (and the lower end of that range should look D1). Sub-5:00 is elite, anybody under that mark should look exclusively D1 and will likely earn a scholarship. The lower end of that range will be earning full rides and being recruited by the best schools in the country.

track4thew wrote:

I'm looking specifically for ranges. I'm curious what is considered "good" and "really good" as well as "average." Is average like 5:50-6:10, good: 5:30-5:50, and very good under 5:30, especially under 5:20? What do you guys think?

To be very good you need to be about 5 flat many programs will not recruit girls over 5.0x and their will be little or no money at many programs for girls that are not at or under 5.

California fitness gram test is happy if a girl is under 10 minutes for what that is worth.

closest example I know wrote:

It's hard to get at an average because most of the girls on the track team are self-selected and above average.

I dont really agree with that. There are a lot of girls who join xc/track for social reason, and don't necessarily think that they are good at it. There are also a few who join because they feel that they're overweight and want to try to get into shape.

So that average girl on the track team might be somewhat skewed faster from the girls who self select because they think they're good runners, but it isn't by much.

I would say average is 5:30 to 6:30. Good is 5:10 to 5:30, and especially good is sub 5:10.

But these are very subjective terms, of course.

My daughters ran on a strong HS team. It’s a bit of a continuum, but breaking 6 in the 1600 was an important barrier between decent/poor. Breaking 5:30 was the barrier between good and decent. You had to be sub 5:10 to be a star. My daughter ran 5:05 and got no real interest from any D1 schools including the Ivy League. She’s running at a very good D3 school now. Her teammate ran 4:57 and she’s running D1.

Wise Old Man wrote:

My daughters ran on a strong HS team. It’s a bit of a continuum, but breaking 6 in the 1600 was an important barrier between decent/poor. Breaking 5:30 was the barrier between good and decent. You had to be sub 5:10 to be a star. My daughter ran 5:05 and got no real interest from any D1 schools including the Ivy League. She’s running at a very good D3 school now. Her teammate ran 4:57 and she’s running D1.

Yea depends on your athletes. The females that I coach have run 4:28, 4:32, 4:37, 4:37 for 1500m. When I first started coaching the barrier was 5 min. I probably have 8-10 females that can break that barrier now. Culture has changed.

track4thew wrote:

I'm looking specifically for ranges. I'm curious what is considered "good" and "really good" as well as "average." Is average like 5:50-6:10, good: 5:30-5:50, and very good under 5:30, especially under 5:20? What do you guys think?

Washington State always seems to turn out some girls that can run pretty fast. To win state or place high in the top two divisions (4A & 3A) you'll need to go under 5:00 for the 1600. In the 3200 there are quite a few girls that run under 11:00. I would classify this as being "really good". "Good" would be in the 5:10 to 5:25 range.