MileSplit North Carolina

Are you sure these times are accurate?

11.4 100 meter for an 8th grade boy
12.76 100 meter for an 8th grade girl
56.1 400 meter for an 8th grade boy
1:01 400 meter for an 8th grade girl
5:36 1600 meter for an 8th grade girl
5:08 1600 meter for an 8th grade boy
26.1 200 meter for an 8th grade girl
23.02 200 meter for an 8th grade boy

I highly doubt those can be correct, and if they are correct shouldn't the middle schoolers of Forsyth County be recviving national attention?

@Paddy53 The times were fully automatic. I was at the meet myself, and I can assure you they are correct. Forsyth County has similar times every year. Just look at Parkland's and Reagan's young female athletes; they ran in the last two Forsyth County middle-school meets. Heck, you can look back over the years and see all the great girls' distance runners that have come out of the middle-schools; there is nearly always a girl in the 5:30's in Forsyth County, which is why there are several strong distance programs there.

Maybe you're not aware of the scope of talent nationally, but most of those times fall in the "good" but not "elite" category. To put those performances in context, here are the results of the 13-14 age group from last summer's USATF Junior Olympics: Keep in mind, roughly half of summer track athletes compete in AAU, so this does not represent the whole talent pool. Last summer, current 9th-grader Bryce Love of Wake Forest-Rolesville ran 10.73, 21.81, and 48.27 in the same meet.

The truth is, every urban school system has this kind of talent. It just needs to be developed, and with the increase in summer track clubs over the past 10 years, plus the rise of attention for middle-school track, more of that is happening.

That was one reason I photographed the meet yesterday. It's been a few years since I have been to that meet, but many of the photos I have from three yrs ago are today's high school standouts.

@CoachGeorgeRJR

Wow then that's amazing. I happily admit that I was wrong. Congrats to those athletes and their coaches for some very impressive times.