Eighth-grader wins girls’ mile race with sub-5-minute run

For all the impressive elite performances over the weekend, another equally stellar result was produced, not by a collegiate runner or even a high school athlete, but by an eighth-grader. Sadie Engelhardt, 14, won the middle school girls’ 1,600m at the Chandler Rotary Classic in Arizona on Saturday in 4:47.90, clocking the third-fastest time recorded by a middle school athlete since the turn of the century.

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Perhaps even more impressive, Engelhardt beat the second- and third-place runners by more than eight seconds, and her time would have won in the varsity (high school) field as well. Her competitors still ran impressive races, and both second and third place crossed the line in under five minutes (4:56.51 and 4:59.79, respectively).

This race comes after an incredible few weeks for the young runner from Ventura, Calif., who has raced four times this year and has improved every time. She has now logged times of 4:54.08, 4:53.01, 4:48.73 and 4:47.90. In a post-race interview with MileSplit after running the indoor mile at the Adidas Indoor Nationals on February 28, where she ran 4:51 for the girl’s full mile, she said her improvements are telling her that she can work harder and train harder.

“I’m not even in high school yet so I’m really proud of where I’m at right now and I’m really excited to see where high school training takes me,” she said.

Engelhardt’s time puts her behind only two other athletes: Lexy Halliday, who ran 4:46.47 in 2016, and Taylor Roe, who ran a 4:47.6 hand time in 2015. Halliday went on to compete for the NCAA championship-winning cross country team Brigham Young University and Roe now competes for Oklahoma State, where she placed second overall at the NCAA Division I cross-country championships this year.

At only 14 years old, Engelhardt’s running career is just getting started, and with the results she has been posting, the running world will be watching to see what she does when she enters the high school circuit.

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