Top states for high school runners

For a state of 600,000 people, ND had alot of great runners, especially women. In 2000, 6 girls at the Class A meet went sub 11:00 - for a state the size of California to have the proportionality, they'd need 330 girls that fast. Those same girls were sub 5 for the mile. A few were under 4:50 and 10:50.

Currently in College

Penny Spichal (Arkansas)

Beth Hoge (Arizona)

Jessie Kindschi (SD State)

Carly Emil (Minnesota)

National Class North Dakotan Women

Janelle Olson (Adams State)

Becki Wells (UF??)

I went through the dye stat rankings for the last 3 years, and counted the number of runners from each state who ran sub-9:10 in the 2-mile (8:32 3k), sub-4:14 in the mile (3:56.5 1500). Here's the top-10.

1. California (27)

2. Oregon (17)

3. Washington (15)

4. Florida (13)

5. Virginia (12)

6. New York (12)

7. Ohio (11)

8. Illinois (11)

9. Texas (10)

10. Michigan (8)

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Nice job, numbers guy. Here I will take your numbers and convert it to per capita and re-rank them according to the US ccensus.

state pop / Fast runners = ratio

1. Oregon 3,421,399 17 201,258

2. Washington 5,894,121 15 392,941

3. Virginia 7,078,515 12 589,876

4. Ohio 11,353,140 11 1,032,103

5. Illinois 12,419,293 11 1,129,026

6. Florida 15,982,378 13 1,229,413

7. Michigan 9,938,444 8 1,242,305

8. California 33,871,648 27 1,254,505

9. New York 18,976,457 12 1,581,371

10.Texas 20,851,820 10 2,085,182

These are just the states you mentioned, obviously there are some more smaller states that would fall into the top ten mix. Very disappointed with California - they should have much more with perfect weather and opportunities.

Yes, but if you take that ratio, multiply it by 3.14 then take the square root of that number times 10 you get...Oh nevermind, I'm not a numbers guy.

I can't believe no one mentioned Minnesota. We always get the "something in the water" reference when it comes to per capita distance talent:

Janis Klecker

Buddy Edelen

Garry Bjorklund

Dick Beardsley

Mark Nenow

Van Nelson

Steve Plasencia

Carrie Tollefson

Steve Holman

Luke Watson

Kara Wheeler

Oregon? wrote:

What are you smoking? Robison is only one of those guys I've even heard of...

Then pay better attention

(Washington) All you have to say is Mead.

trackgeek and malmo -- cummings was absolutely a cal gy - rhighetti hs in Santa Maria (state mile runner-up to my lil bro in 71) and 99.9% sure padilla was a nor cal guy - I know he went to JC up in bay area somewhere (Chabot Junior College) - late bloomer. San Leandro, CA in HS. now I'm 100%

Cummings: Righetti, Santa Maria, CA 1971

Smaller states like RI. They produce better HS athletes because the coachs don't push them as hard as in other states so they explode on the scene in college and beyond. Plus the state has a small population is if you fator that in RI only needs 4-5 great athletes to be ranked #1 which it has

can't believe the wisco loyalists haven't chimed in here. Pains this ex-MN to admit, but they have far better/deeper performances than MN, or just about anywhere else.

Oklahoma produces the best HS runners they just all play football and baseball and drink beer and get fat....I know first hand.....

After wasting a couple of hours gathering and crunching numbers:

For strength of male high school distance runners by state measured by the number of footlocker finalists over the past 5 years Utah wins for number of finalists per capita and California wins for total numbers. This is ultimateley a better measure then track times because of altitude and other factors.

The number of male footlocker finalists by state per capitata per year for the years 1997-2001 multiplied by 10,000,000.

UT 7.05

MT 6.63

VT 6.52

NH 6.35

NE 3.5

OR 2.88

MI 2.8

SD 2.64

MA 2.51

VA 2.23

NC 2.2

ME 1.55

ID 1.51

KY 1.48

IL 1.44

NJ 1.41

IN 1.31

CT 1.17

NY 1.16

CA 1.04

WA 1

AL 0.9

OH 0.88

MN 0.8

AZ 0.75

WI 0.74

MO 0.71

TX 0.66

PA 0.65

FL 0.61

SC 0.49

GA 0.48

CO 0.45

MD 0.37

TN 0.35

AK 0

AR 0

DE 0

HI 0

IA 0

KA 0

LA 0

MS 0

ND 0

NM 0

NV 0

OK 0

RI 0

WV 0

WY 0

Total number of male footlocker finalists by state for the years 1997-2001

CA 18

MI 14

NY 11

IL 9

NC 9

MA 8

UT 8

VA 8

TX 7

NJ 6

FL 5

OH 5

OR 5

IN 4

NH 4

PA 4

KY 3

MT 3

NE 3

WA 3

AL 2

AZ 2

CT 2

GA 2

MN 2

MO 2

VT 2

WI 2

CO 1

ID 1

ME 1

MD 1

SC 1

SD 1

TN 1

AK 0

AR 0

DE 0

HI 0

IA 0

KA 0

LA 0

MS 0

NV 0

NM 0

ND 0

OK 0

RI 0

WV 0

WY 0

Population statistics were gather from the July 2001 estimates from the US census bureau. Footocker information was gathered from

http://footlockercc.com/

. Click on history to view by year national results for boys or girls.

Thus per capita Utah is the best state in the nation. California is the deepest state in the nation. If someone wants to figure it out for girls go ahead. I'll wait on that one until I have daughters.

Riley's coach in NY at Skankeletes (sp?) was also a very good and knowledgable coach who produces great teams and runners every year. He was also very instrumental in Riley's development, maybe more so than the Brookline coach. By the time he moved to Mass he was already a stud and just made the natural progression. But, this has regressed into a NY vs. Mass discussion about to which state Riley owes his success when in fact he would have been a stud no matter where he went.

Nice piece of work man,

thanx for taking the time to put that together.

-Clay

... the fragmented conclusion seems to be that .... every state has 'something in the water'. maybe that was the idea to begin with. lots of info tho.