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The outdoor track and field season may be over, but six high school athletes from the west coast have a plan in motion to go after a sub-4 attempt in the full mile together.
Matt Strangio, Cole Sprout, Thomas Boyden and Leo Daschbach say they will attack a competitive mile on May 23 in California, while Nathan Green and Easton Allred are likley attendees but not guaranteed at this point.
Only 10 boys in high school history have ever broken four minutes in the mile, though no one has achieved that feat since 2017 -- Reed Brown was the last high school boy to break four and did so in a men's field in St. Louis.
This past week, Oklahoma State signee Ryan Schoppe, a soon-to-be graduate of La Porte High School in Texas, soloed a 4-flat mile on his own.
* Reed Brown ran 3:59.30 in 2017 at the Festival of Miles in St. Louis
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Two teammates will also take pacing duties.
The group aims to have this attempt legitimized with fully automatic timing and says it will go to lengths to make sure the effort is in compliance with official record keeping.
But logistics will be important, as five athletes will be traveling into the state from other areas of the country.
California governor Gavin Newsom began last week loosening restrictions on areas hit less hard than others in the state, and the sub-4 group says they will travel to a county where "non-contact sports" have been greenlighted in limited groups and "groups of six or less" have been approved. Newsom recently this week began opening up public spaces in various California counties.
The group will limit this attempt to just six athletes to make sure they are within that mandate.
Athletes like Green may encounter some restrictions once they travel between states. In April, it was reported that Idaho was among the states that would require domestric travelers to self-quarantine for 14 days once back from out-of-state travel. However, Idaho's governor, Brad Little, said that the state's stay-at-would expire on May 1 and would not be extended.
Colorado and Arizona, meanwhile, did not have the same self-quarantine measures.
Meanwhile, while there is a site and race time already mapped out, MileSplit is not reporting it to prevent groups of people from attending this event and possibly flout social distancing efforts.
The group say they will have designated areas -- essentially "coaching boxes" -- for families and coaches to watch the race from the track level and to control social distancing.
Further measures are also being discussed for safety.
However, one thing is clear: The group says they will make sure the necessary parameters are in order to make sure this attempt goes off in compliance with state and federal guidelines. This could be among the last attempts for these athletes to achieve these heights in high school. Sprout and Boyden will become teammates at Stanford, while Strangio will head off to Portland, Allred to BYU and Daschbach to Washington. Green will have one more year left in high school.
What made this more exciting, one athlete say recently, was watching Schoppe nearly shatter the mark this past week on his own.
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