The Best Writing On MileSplit From 2023

That's because last year at this time, she removed a four-inch tumor from her left breast. 

1.5 million.

That's how many people have watched a 15-second clip on the MileSplit Instagram page of 8th-grader Sophia Rodriguez running a 4:56 indoor 1,600m back in early February.

The middle-school distance phenom out of Dallastown Area (PA) has evolved into an internet sensation within the high school track and field community, seemingly overnight.

The Cuthbertson Four: This Distance Pack Aims For Dominance

Maybe Walsh didn't realize how special that moment would be years later as those runners eventually became four of the best to ever don Cavalier jerseys.

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by Ashley Tysiac - MileSplit

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FEATURE: Relay Teams Eyeing Moore Success In CIF Postseason

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by Ryan Blystone - MileSplit California

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Process Has Shaped Max Herman Into Becoming An Elite Thrower

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by Brett Haffner - MileSplit

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A New Chapter For S.C. Track And Field Coach Chris Greene

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by Kevin Melton - MileSplit South Carolina

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Cousins. State Champions. The Best Throwers In Kansas. 

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by Tim Casey - MileSplit Recruiting Reporter

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Granada Hills Charter senior Dijon Stanley is a football player who runs track. Helix Charter's Adren Parker is a track runner who plays football.

When high school ended and the next phase of Abukaram's life began, she wasn't quite sure where running fit in her life.

Emotionally traumatic moments had been a source of pain through her final years as a high school athlete. But now, without the security of a uniform, a coach and training instructions, she was forced to find her own place within the sport. 

Education has always been a priority for the family so making the transition from Catholic boarding school in Uturu to public high school in New York figured to be the biggest challenge. 

Osunkwo was confident in his English, but would people be able to cut through his thick Nigerian accent and understand him? 

"After all that time of not running, I just had so much energy to put onto that course. I planned to just race and see what happened"

In his first two years of high school cross country, Onalaska's Manny Putz took The Badger State by storm, winning 12 races against some of the state's best athletes, many of whom had dozens of more races under their belt.

Simply put, he routinely out-classed the best-of-the-best.

Two weeks after her high school debut Stutzman ran her first 5K at the Liberty Bell Cross Country Invitational. The result was a 18:36 clocking -- the second-fastest in school history.

"It was one of those moments where you're like, ok we have something very real on our hands here, and it's going to be fun if we do it right," Swartz said. 

Emmanuel Perez came out of nowhere. He never ran for a club team, didn't run cross country his freshman year and wasn't even much of an athlete before high school.

"I was a chunky kid back then," Perez said.

That is, in fact, how he earned his nickname "Big Manny," which has been used to distinguish him from Cathedral High School's other top runner, Emmanuel Hernandez, who is dubbed "Little Manny."

When Simeon Birnbaum won his second Gatorade state Player of the Year award this past spring in South Dakota for his merits in track and field, earning a $1,000 grant to be given to the organization of his choice, he did something a bit unusual. 

He decided to give it to his local hockey association. 

"Hockey is king in Canada," said Birnbaum, a current Rapids City Stevens High School senior, relaying a bit of his family background. "That's the sport everyone does." 

Some of the nation's top names in high school sprinting took to the blocks for the 60m at the Millrose Games in February.

Issam Asinga and Micah Larry from the powerhouse program of Montverde Academy (FL). Two of Archbishop Carroll's (DC) best in Marcus Brown and Camren Williams.

But in lane five stood someone a little off the radar: Specifically, the 6-foot-3 and 200-pound guy out of Thurmont, Maryland, sporting a red singlet and hoping to have a chance against a field of established talents.

Chris Preddie is accustomed to thriving in big meets at the University of Texas in Austin.

As a senior at Little River Academy (TX) last year, he won the long jump and triple jump at the Texas UIL Class 3A state meet. The previous year, he was first in the triple jump and second in the long jump.

This week, Preddie returns to that same Mike Myers track on an even bigger stage.

There probably wasn't a team at the New Balance National Championships that experienced more of an emotional rollercoaster ride this weekend in Boston than the Seton Hall Prep 4x400-meter relay squad.

After blasting a NJ record and US No. 4 all-time 3:14.53 and crossing the finish line first to successfully defend their 4x400 title on Sunday, Seton Hall Prep seniors Nicholas DeVita, Russell Webb, Ryan Matulonis and Xavier Donaldson didn't get a chance to immediately celebrate their epic performance together.

Addison Ritzenhein took crisp, business-like strides. 

With a mile to go in the girls 4A/5A race on Saturday at the St. Vrain Invitational in Lyons, Colorado, she had company -- Niwot teammate Olivia Alessandrini and Mountain Vista's Peyton Adams trailed just a few steps behind her. 

But Ritzenhein's focus was in front of her. 

Mario Heslop, arguably one of the best high school sprinters in New Jersey history during his days at Franklin High School, died in a car accident on Monday, Franklin High School Athletic Director Ken Margolin confirmed on Tuesday morning.

According to a report by Spreeznews.com, Heslop died in the accident on Monday in the area of Somerset Township. He was 23 years old.

Frabotta credits the high level coaching he was exposed to and the competitive, dedicated training environment he shared with teammates at Saint Ignatius as contributing forces for the success he's enjoyed in the early stages of his college career and subsequently his qualifying effort achieved at USATF U20s. 

"Coach Kyle and Coach Wolf played instrumental roles in preparing me for both the collegiate and national level by the workouts I was given, the structure of my practices and also the guidance I was provided throughout the entirety of the season," Frabotta said. 

PHILADELPHIA -- Ryan Beegle was running out of track. Ainsley Campbell was running out of gas.

So with the finish line fast approaching at Franklin Field and the scent of blood in the water, Beegle, a senior at Chatham, put his head down and dug down deep to make one final expulsive charge in Friday's 4x800 Championship of America race at the 127th Penn Relays presented by Toyota.

It's one thing to win multiple individual OATCCC D2/3 Indoor state titles and set new state records all in one day.

It's another thing to win the state team title by yourself. 

Juliette Laracuente-Huebner had that kind of day on Friday as she accumulated 40 points for Marengo Highland (OH) High School to earn the team title. 

Millennium junior Landen LeBlond put together one of the most impressive efforts from a distance runner in Arizona prep track and field history this past weekend -- but it was almost derailed by a smoothie. 

On Thursday evening, LeBlond recorded a massive personal best in the 3200m at the Scottsdale Distance Classic. LeBlond shaved off 16 seconds from her top time, running 10:22.01. That time puts her at No. 6 on the all-time state list. 

Ben Barrows, an assistant track and field and cross country coach at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, was thrilled to spend the last weekend of May in Pueblo, Colorado.

That was the site of the NCAA Division II Outdoor National Championships, a meet that Pittsburg State's men's team ended up winning for the second consecutive year.

Still, as Barrows coached the team at the nationals, he was also following on his phone the results of another meet 400 miles away.

After all, recruiting is a major part of Barrows' job, too, so he wanted to know what was going on at the Kansas State Outdoor Championships. 

Autumn Wilson arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, on a nearly perfect fall day on September 18, 2021, alongside her father, Frank, ready for what they both would deem, 'Official Visit' weekend.

As the pair walked outside toward ground transportation at the airport, the first small touch arrived: A van from the University of Georgia.

In terms of VIP treatment, this would be as close as you could get in track and field. The university was pulling out all the stops to recruit Wilson, considered one of the top sprinters in the nation. A compensated flight to Atlanta was the first step, followed by the personal taxi. The van would take them -- and four other recruits -- 71 miles east to Athens. 

In track and field, there are certain athletes that come around and you know they have "it."

Whatever "it" is, they just seem to possess the characteristics to stand out and perform on a different level.

Ken Reeves had a skill for picking out diamonds in the rough.

The cross country coach and physical education teacher at Nordhoff High School could cull talent, and a kid named Javier Ramirez was on his radar. 

Ramirez didn't know running was a sport. An undocumented immigrant newly arrived from Mexico, Ramirez loved soccer and running in P.E. class was just something fun to do.

Indeed, a high school pole vaulter going 16-5 will turn heads. It was a solid achievement for someone who, in less than a year, improved his PR by nearly five feet, broke and re-broke Buchanan's old record of 15-7, and won the TRAC League Championship (his first 16-5), Central Section Division I title (15-6), CS Masters Meet title (15-11) and reached the CIF State final.

While he was also a solid wide receiver for Buchanan football for two seasons, what he accomplished in pole vault put him on college teams' radar. Green, after visiting Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UCLA, committed to the University of Oklahoma for track and field this past fall.

If you are a high jumper, you may want to put a small black band around one of the straps of your uniform top this outdoor season.

You may want to do that to honor a track and field innovator who still impacts the event you compete in today. He invented the style you use in the high jump.

His name was Richard Fosbury, and he passed away on March 12th at age 76 due to lymphoma, the New York Times reported. 

I normally carry a great sense of confidence when I line up to race.

I enjoy being competitive and I believe in myself. I don't have to do much self-convincing before a race. But going into each of my races as a senior at the University of Delaware this year, I was feeling a sense of fear that I had never felt before.

You don't have to go far in the library of how-to-become-a-distance-runner before you trip over some tome on individualized training or proper mechanics or the latest on how to develop a 'right stuff' mentality. No one's yet come out with The Book of Pain.

I had a runner in an early-season outdoor track 800m event. She had not raced since December -- a complicated tale of small but cumulative issues that ended her indoor efforts mid-season. So, there were lingering questions, and chief among them was how to manage her first race in a long time in a field that contained the previous year's 1500m state champion. We talked about that. I suggested a race strategy that contained both a simple A and a simple B plan. One or the other, we hoped, would work. At the track, I wished her and her teammates in the race good luck and stepped back onto the infield to watch things unfold. Regardless of outcome, it was going to be hard.

Dear Running,

For as long as I can remember, you have always been with me. 

Ever since I could stand on two feet, I have been running. I ran circles around my childhood kitchen table. I ran into the wall surrounding my elementary school -- and I have the scar to prove it! I ran laps across the field every day in middle school P.E.

As I grew up, running became so ingrained in my life that I didn't even notice it was there. It played a supporting role to my primary sport. 

Shakespeare started all this foolishness with "To be, or not to be? That is the question."

Only for track and field coaches, it's whether or not to load up in the brand new 4x800-meter relay or to stick with the more traditional method of going for awards and points in the 800, 3200 and 4x400 relay.

Really, quite a dilemma.

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