> 1. Comparing events across time is woefully inaccurate for the most obvious of reasons.
It depends on the athlete's attitude.
If they want to compare themselves with the best in the past and future, they go for top times, course records, etc.
If they feel winning titles is enough for comparison against past/future athletes, they will not choose to run top times.
However, the strength of competition for winning titles varies from year to year.
Also, national titles didn't exist in track until recently, and are ignored by many athletes.
Most of these factors provide good reasons for running top times if an athlete feels they have abilities beyond their current competition.
> 2. The 800/mile/2-mile are the only events H.S. girls routinely run, therefore any other events need to be weighted.
I agree, so I made the "version 2" list above, which reduced points for the 10k and marathon.
This still leaves the 5k; maybe it should be downweighted as well.
> Also, most states didn't start running the 2 mile until the mid-80s.
Good point. Although the 3k has many top times in the 70s/80s.
Perhaps some of the California athletes with top 1500/mile times (Larrieu, Heald, Plumer) did not have the chance to get points for 3000/2mile . But I see Cory Schubert with a top 3k time in 1983.
How to combine performances from several distances is also an open question.
> 3. Ask any athlete what it means to anchor a record setting relay and then tell them that their relay performances don't count towards their H.S. career.
Relays are about the only even with team synergy, so they are of course compelling. It's hard to include in an individual ranking, because many high school distance runners don't have access to a large team with other strong relay members.