Cain & Days- Our NSAF Athletes of the Week
Our NSAF Athletes of the Week ending January 27th are Mary Cain and Braheme Days, Jr.
Mary Cain:
Some may call it the greatest high school performance ever. If it’s not, it’s right up there with the best.
That’s the incredible mile run by Mary Cain at the New Balance meet on Saturday, January 26. She finished third in an elite field, running 4:32.78 and passing 1500 meters at 4:16.11. She broke two of the oldest high school existing records: the 4:38.5 mile by Debbie Heald (Neff, La Mirada, CA) on March 17, 1972, and the 4:18.9 1500 meters by Lynn Jennings (Bromfield, Harvard, MA) on February 10, 1978. In fact, the former mile record was the oldest current U.S. high school record.
Those of us who witnessed Mary’s outdoor high school record of 4:11.01 sixth place finish at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain last July were not that surprised. We figured she would not have a lot of difficulty in getting the record. Breaking Debbie Heald’s record by 1 or 2 seconds seemed doable. Breaking it by almost 6 seconds turned out to not only be doable, but stunningly doable!
Her post race interview showed her youthful enthusiasm as well as her maturity. She acknowledged that she has much to learn at the elite level even with that incredible performance.
Watching the replay of the race showed that maturity. She ran an intelligent race, though some would say that she spent too much time on the outside of lane 1. However, that tactic did keep her out of trouble. She did move up nicely on the last lap, passing two runners and actually gaining on the first two, Bowman and SIfuentes. Her last 100 meters was in the range of 15.5 seconds! (Note that he last 100 meters in a mile race – unlike that of the 1600m - is the difference between the 1500 meter mark plus about 1.2 seconds subtracted from the mile time).
If she stays healthy, she is liable to take down all of the indoor records from 800m to 2 Miles. She already has the 3000m overall record (9:02.10), albeit on an oversized track. She’s likely to get that one (and the two mile) this weekend at the Boston Indoor Games where she is scheduled to run the two mile against elite competition. Then it’s Millrose for another mile, and perhaps the USATF Indoor Champs and the New Balance Nationals Indoor to round out the indoor season.
Meanwhile, we will enjoy and appreciate this incredibly talented young athlete. They don’t come around very often.
Braheme Days, Jr.
Our male Athlete of the Week honors go to Braheme Days Jr. of Bridgeton High School. Days, a senior, won the shot put at a South Jersey Track Coaches Association meet this past weekend with a nation-leading put of 69 feet. The mark is a #9 All-Time distance just short of his #8 All-Time put last year.
Days is also our returning NBIN shot put Champion and won the bronze medal at the 2011 World Youth Athletics Championships in Lille, France.
Mary Cain's Photo courtesy of PhotoRun
