I’d be inclined to say no. I used to think yes but as I’ve really looked into I now think no. Lots of towns with good schools and good athletic opportunities field 1000s of these kids, however there are over 26,000 high schools in the USA.
Are there more high schools in the US with at least one sub 5 miler than ones without one?
High School Running
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definitely 'No'
the plurality (i.e around 60%) of school districts are actually pretty small (<5,000 students in the entire school district) and don't have lots of resources for track and field or cross country. they might only have a few kids doing distance running any given year
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Historically or currently
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Some states have 300 school districts with none as large as 5000. I estimate that the median school district in the US is 1000 students or about 80 per grade.
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Some states have 300 school districts with none as large as 5000. I estimate that the median school district in the US is 1000 students or about 80 per grade.
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If you restrict the question to only public high schools with over 800 kids I think the answer would be yes, but as it stands I suspect not.
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I'd say yes. I looked at the worst academically inner city high schools in my state and random rural schools. Almost all had at least one sub 5:00 1600 runner, and the one that didn't had only 45 students per grade.
Virtually any suburban school will have multiple per year.
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I grew up in a small town and when I was in HS 40 years ago most schools had someone running the 1600 under 5. Right now in those same towns most school usually don't have one, though.
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yes. wrote:
I'd say yes. I looked at the worst academically inner city high schools in my state and random rural schools. Almost all had at least one sub 5:00 1600 runner, and the one that didn't had only 45 students per grade.
Virtually any suburban school will have multiple per year.
Where did you find this info? I doubt its accuracy.
Looking just at the Philadelphia Public League 2022 Championship results, only 8 boys broke 5:00 for 1600 and there are dozens of Public High Schools in Philadelphia.
According to a Gault article from June 2022 -- Paul Streleckis, Gary Martin's high school coach (a guy who knows about training and had been coaching for a while) had never coached a sub 5:00 runner until Gary.
I don't think over half of US High Schools currently have a sub 5:00 guy. However, I would guess that a majority may have school records under 5:00.
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I checked schools on athletic.net. Looked at the lowest ranked Baltimore public schools and random rural ones.
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There were more in the 50s through 90s than now. My senior year we had one in the 4:20s and three more in the 4:30s. Three of those four are still on my school's top ten list, and this was nearly 40 years ago.
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More than 100 Iowa high schools had nobody break 5 last year.
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More than 100 Iowa high schools had nobody break 5 last year.
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Since school size is intimately related to how many fast people you have, here are Iowa HS'es that participated in XC. Median school size is only 200 students.
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1A school's had 62 kids go <5 last year with ~140 schools
2A had 86 kids with 72 schools.
3A had 95+ kids with 64 schools
4A had 196+ kids with 48 schools
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I didn't think sub 5 was that rare but it seems like I am wrong. I ran in CA where sub 5 didn't even get your top 5 in league. Had to be sub 4:50 min and don't even get started on sections and state times.
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Whothot wrote:
I didn't think sub 5 was that rare but it seems like I am wrong. I ran in CA where sub 5 didn't even get your top 5 in league. Had to be sub 4:50 min and don't even get started on sections and state times.
I went to a small southern CA school and when I started high school our school record was 4:58. By the time I ended, myself and one other guy had gone sub 5. Other schools in our league regularly had sub 5 guys but you would still be all league if you could run sub 5 at league finals. We were a small school that didn't even have a track but I can see how a lot of other schools would struggle to get guys under 5 most years, even if they have good coaching or large student bodies.
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I thought we were talking about 5:00/mile Girls
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small guy wrote:
More than 100 Iowa high schools had nobody break 5 last year.
So no one broke 5 minutes for the 1600 in iowa last year?
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Same here, I was in a small league with some occasional stars and talented underclassmen but not much depth, where sub 5 would usually place top 3 at the small dual meets but league finals would require ~low 4:30s to move on to CIF ( I got 4th with 4:35), and by CIF prelims, if you were sub 4:30 you were only midpack even in D3
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