* Connor Burns won the 2-mile championship at Brooks PR in 2022
Photo Credit: MileSplit
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Connor Burns, the first high school boy in 2023 to break four minutes in the mile, added an even bigger accomplishment to his resume on Saturday, downing a 19-year-old national high school record for 5,000 meters, clocking a time of 13:37.30 at the On Running Track Fest at Mt. SAC.
It was a brilliant moment for Burns, who finished fifth in the men's professional field, because he downed a legendary name in the process, surpassing Galen Rupp's former national record high school mark of 13:37.91, which came at a meet in Belgium in 2004 when the former Oregon prep was 18 years old.
Burns wasn't the only high schooler in the field on Saturday, either. Crater's Tyrone Gorze, who broke the indoor high school national 5K record in March, finished 10th overall in 13:45.81, which is now No. 6 all-time outdoors.
Burns, who ran 61 seconds on his last 400 meter split, isn't the first boy in recent memory to go after the mark.
Just last year, Newbury Park's Lex Young registered a time of 13:43.95 at the Sound Running Meet on this very weekend.
But the Southern Boone County High School senior and Oregon recruit now enters into a list that only includes 10 names outdoors. He's one of 10 high school athletes to now have broken 14 minutes for 5,000 meters.
That list expands to three more names when you consider high school indoor accomplishments, including two names, Gorze and Daniel Simmons, who achieved the feat in March.
Gorze, in fact, broken the indoor national record of 13:57.04, hitting 13:56.82 at New Balance Nationals Indoor. Burns was not in that indoor field.
