Colin Sahlman repeats as invitational 3,200-meter champion, as he and Lex Young run two fastest times in meet history to lead 23 competitors to sub-9 efforts in race and 32 overall

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

ARCADIA, Calif. – Newbury Park’s boys distance runners have made such a habit of putting on a show in recent years, chalking up state titles and drawing crowds wherever they compete.

On Saturday, the show expanded to showcase a field as deep and as talented as any ever seen in a high school 3,200-meter race.

Senior Colin Sahlman and junior Lex Young led the Panthers to another astonishing finish in the boys invitational 3,200 in the 54th Arcadia Invitational at Arcadia High, with Sahlman winning in a meet-record 8 minutes, 34.99 seconds and Young finishing second in 8:35.72.

What followed, though, was amazing.

RESULTS | RACE VIDEOS | INTERVIEWS | PAST ARCADIA 3,200 WINNERS

The race featured 23 runners who broke the 9-minute barrier, with Big Bear senior Max Sannes, an Air Force Academy commit, placing 23rd in 8:59.35.

Compare that to 2019 – the last Arcadia competition before the COVID-19 pandemic – when 14 ran faster than 9 minutes. Last year, 15 bettered the mark in a race featuring only California competitors..

Perhaps the race’s third-place finisher, Stanford-bound Zane Bergen of Niwot High in Colorado, offered the most concise explanation.

“The more fast people we have," the Stanford commit said, “I guess the faster the races are.”

Sahlman’s time was just off his Feb. 19 mark in the Sundown Track Series meet at Azusa Pacific, when he ran 8:33.32, the fastest performance in a 3,200 race in prep history.

Along with junior Aaron Sahlman (eighth, 8:48.28), and Colorado School of Mines-bound senior Daniel Appleford (10th, 8:52.19), Newbury Park had four runners break 9 minutes. That equaled last year, when the Panthers became the first high school boys team to accomplish that feat.

Clovis junior Christopher Caudillo was fourth in 8:45.19, a personal best by six seconds. Manchester (Conn.) senior Aidan Puffer, a Northern Arizona commit, was fifth in 8:46.48.

In all at the Arcadia Invitational this weekend, 32 boys ran faster than 9 minutes in the 3,200, including nine in the seeded section preceding the invitational race.

For the girls, a whopping 65 runners broke 11 minutes, with 26 of the 28 in their invitational race eclipsing the mark. They were led by Mira Costa senior and Duke commit Dalia Frias, whose victory in a meet-record 9:55.50 was just the fifth girls sub-10 minute 3,200 run in Arcadia history.

Ironically, while it was a strong Newbury Park performance, it didn’t blow away the Panthers’ lofty goals, which has often been the case recently.

Colin Sahlman, the Northern Arizona-bound senior, was looking to better his own high school record.

“Obviously, I wanted to go for that … around, like, sub-8:30 mark,” Sahlman said. “But we tried to start off with each of us (leading) a lap, and it didn’t really stay consistent so that kind of threw off the whole thing, I’d say.

“We really just had to pick up the race as it was going along,” he added later, “as today didn’t really feel like the day, But we have to just keep going after it, no matter how we felt and I tried to pick it up after that third lap, and I think that’s what picked up the pace from there.”

Sahlman and Lex Young broke away in the second half of the race, leaving a secondary pack. Up front, the two Panthers runners pushed each other in the final lap toward their superb finishes, with Sahlman joining Luke Puskedra of Judge Memorial High in Utah in 2007-08 and Chris Solinsky of Stevens Point High in Wisconsin in 2002-03 as back-to-back winners.

“Me and Colin, we were able to push that last mile and keep the pace,” Lex Young said.

Behind them, there were great things going on.

Caudillo ran to a strong fourth-place finish, but was also fueled by watching teammate Nathaniel Avila earlier break 9 minutes for the first time in the seeded 3,200, as he ran 8:56.74 and placed fifth.

“It gave me a little bit more motivation to see my teammate going out there and doing such an amazing thing,” Caudillo said, “and then here he is all happy and he’s able to encourage me super well and be there for me before the race, too.”

Sam Rich, the senior from Catawba Ridge, placed 15th in 8:55.78, which set a high school state record in South Carolina.

Rounding out the non-Newbury Park top 10 in the boys invitational 3,200 were Gonzaga commit Michael Maiorano of South Medford, Ore. (sixth, 8:46.92), Texas-bound Emmanuel Sgouros of St. John’s School in Texas (seventh, 8:47.19) and Notre Dame signee Ethan Coleman (ninth, 8:51.09) of Olympia High in Washington.

The fact that it was a star-studded race was not lost on Lex Young.

“Honestly, I was a little bit frightened by that list,” he said. “That’s a pretty tall group of people. Those are some big names and fast guys., I have tons of respect for all of them …”