Engelhardt bounces back with authority
Ventura High runner to compete in Olympic Trials after record-setting season in mile
It might seem odd to say that a runner who was the top-ranked high school girls’ miler in the nation as a sophomore has had a rebound season as a junior this year. But that’s a valid statement when one is discussing Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura High School in California.
Engelhardt clocked nation-leading prep times of 4:13.04 in the 1,500 meters and 4:33.45 in the 1,600 — which converts to a mile in 4:35.05 — last year, in addition to running 2:06.71 in the 800 and 9:51.49 in the 3,200. However, she had run faster in the 800 (2:05.66), 1,500 (4:11.79) and 3,200 (9:50.69) as a freshman, and her best of 4:35.16 in the mile was nearly as fast as her top converted best from last year.
This season, she has lowered her personal bests to 2:03.48 in the 800, 4:08.86 in the 1,500, and a national high school outdoor record of 4:28.46 in the mile.
“I just didn’t feel super strong,” Engelhardt said about a sophomore year in track that followed a cross country season in which she experienced breathing issues and an overall sense of fatigue for an extended period of time. “I felt like every workout I was kind of holding on and not running with power.”
She recalls how much better she felt in January when she began doing track work following the conclusion of the cross country season in early December.
“I remember in my workouts I would just feel strong,” she said. “I was 100 percent where my legs, my feet, everything was working together. I was powerful. I think I just lacked that before because I wasn’t able to get in a regular cross country season prior to track.”
The 17-year-old Engelhardt has performed so well this year that she will run in a first-round heat of the women’s 1,500 meters in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field later today.
She will be one of 12 entrants in the second of three heats, which start at 8:23 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time. If she finishes in the top seven in her heat or is one of the three-fastest runners who do not record a top-seven finish in their heat, she will advance to one of two semifinals scheduled to start at 8:53 p.m., Friday.
The final will be held at 8:09 p.m. on Sunday.
“Just take it one race at a time,” Engelhardt said when asked about her goals for the Trials, where her entry time of 4:08.86 ranks her 34th in the 38-runner field. “My dream goal would definitely be to make the final even if I’m dead last. But moving on to the next round after the first race would also be cool. Running in a semifinal would be great… I just want to soak in the experience, and race, and watch some good track.”
Max Engelhardt, Sadie’s father, hinted that it would be a mistake to equate her desire to soak in the experience with just being happy to be there.
“I don’t think she gets in awe of people,” he said when it comes to competing against professional and collegiate runners. “I think she feels like there’s less pressure on her in those races because she’s not necessarily expected to win, like when she’s been running in high school races.”
Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Ventura High cross country coach Josh Spiker and youth coach Matt Hammel, Engelhardt was able to compete at the prep level and also run in four races that included professional runners during the course of the season.
Her first race against pros came in The TEN meet at JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, California, in mid-March when she won the women’s 1,500 in 4:09.70 while defeating a field that included second-place Lauren Gregory in 4:10.03 and third-place Jenn Randall in 4:11.49.
After a pacesetter pulled her through the opening 300 meters in 50.15, Engelhardt was in the lead when she came through 700 meters in 1:58.05 and 1,100 in 3:06.68.
Gregory moved past her midway through the first turn on the last lap, but Engelhardt stayed close behind her until retaking the lead for good with 70 meters to go.
While Spiker and Hammel were delighted with the competitive savvy that Engelhardt displayed during the race, she was pleased to have bettered her previous best of 4:11.79 that had come in June of 2022 when she placed fifth in the second heat of the women’s 1,500 in the Portland Track Festival at Lewis and Clark College.
“That was a big one,” she said about her performance in The TEN meet. “When I ran that fast there, it lowered my previous best from my freshman year that had come in June. To have done that in March was promising to me.”
Ventura High alum Spiker, who works with the high school’s distance runners during track season, was happy with the speed that Engelhardt displayed during a 63.02-second final lap. But the former California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) state champion in the boys’ 3,200 meters was most excited with the way she reacted to Gregory’s move with 350 meters left in the race.
“That cognitive ability to regroup was something,” he said. “To regroup after she was passed and then to go again with a 100 to go was amazing.”
Another display of her last-lap speed came in the women’s race of the Hoka Festival of Miles at St. Louis University High School on May 30 when she set her second national high school outdoor record of the year with a second-place time of 4:28.46.
The race started about 10 minutes after Allie Zealand, a senior homeschooled student from Lynchburg, Virginia, had bettered Engelhardt’s previous prep outdoor record of 4:31.72 with a winning time of 4:30.38 in the high school girls’ race.
In what was an impressive negative-split effort, Engelhardt ran the second half of her race significantly faster than the first.
Not counting the pacesetter, she was in 12th place after coming through the first 409 meters in 68.95 seconds and had moved up to ninth at 809 meters in 2:16.95. She was in eighth place at 1,209 meters in 3:25.25, but she had moved up to seventh with 300 meters to go and to sixth with half a lap left. She then passed two runners during the final turn of the race before overtaking three more in the home straightaway and closing in rapidly on winner Randall, who clocked 4:28.23.
“She was out of the race,” Spiker said in amazement when he spoke about Engelhardt’s position with a lap to go. “She closed so well and gained so much ground over the last 300. I was like, ‘Jeez, I didn’t know you could reel in a field like that.’ ”
Engelhardt ran her last lap in 63.21 seconds and said in a trackside interview that her final time probably could have been faster had her pace been more even throughout the race.
Those who have followed Engelhardt’s career will recall that she was not known for running quick final laps on a consistent basis during her first two years of high school. But Spiker points out that she has frequently been so dominant at the prep level that she often entered races shooting for a specific time. That winning was often a given, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
That led to Engelhardt often blasting out to a big lead in the first half of a race and then lacking a significant kick at the end of it.
One example of that came in the Arcadia Invitational in Arcadia, California, last year when she won the mile in 4:36.26 after coming through the half mile in 2:16.76 before running her final lap in 70.14 seconds.
Another occurred in this year’s Mt. San Antonio Relays in Walnut, California, when she set her first national high school record in the mile when she ran 4:31.72 after coming through 809 meters in an unofficial 2:13.3 and running her final lap in roughly 70 seconds.
“It’s been fun to watch her grow from this person who only knows one speed, all-out, to see how savvy she’s become,” Hammel said. “Her ability to read a situation in a race, and then react to it, is very impressive.”
Hammel is a longtime youth coach who first started working with Engelhardt when she was in the fourth grade and he and his wife Joy were coaching a cross country team at Poinsettia Elementary School in Ventura.
Sadie had been playing soccer since age 4 at that point in her life. But Shannon Engelhardt, Sadie’s mom, had encouraged her daughter to give cross country a try as a way of meeting other kids after Shannon, Max, and Sadie had moved from Salem, Massachusetts, earlier in the year.
Shannon still remembers Hammel telling her and Max before Sadie’s first race — over a one-mile distance — that she was a really good runner. Shannon recalled thinking it was nice of Hammel to say that, but he probably said that to a lot of parents to be positive.
“Then the gun went off and she just took off,” Shannon recalled with a laugh. “She was so far ahead at one point that I thought she had taken a wrong turn… I remember when she crossed the finish line, she looked oddly, like she was very satisfied.”
Hammel recalls Sadie “going as fast as she possibly could” during the first 200 to 300 meters of the race. He also remembers how exhausted she was at a latter point on the course and thinking there was no way she was going to finish.
“She hurt so bad for the rest of the race, but she would not give up,” he recalled.
The tenacity she displayed that day is one of her greatest assets, according to Hammel.
“I’ve never seen anyone like her, nothing even close,” he said. “She is the most mentally tough and competitive person I’ve ever met.”
Spiker, who just completed his first year coaching at Ventura, said what he calls Engelhardt’s “headspace” is amazing.
“It’s hard to explain, but when she’s on the start line, she can be laughing and joking with her teammates, and then a minute later, you can see just see something on her face change.”
He then added that she has that “killer instinct. Michael Jordan had it. Kobe [Bryant] had it. It’s what can make the difference between great and exceptional or very good athletes… Yes, she has a ton of talent and she works very hard. She can hurt and she’s 100 percent into it and she gets after workouts. But she just has that something that very few athletes have. That innate ability to find an extra gear in the wind.”
Shannon Engelhardt describes her daughter as a “social person who just happens to have this little switch in her brain when she’s competing. I would say for the most part. She’s a very normal 17-year-old girl. But there’s something inside of her that allows her to access all of her potential in a millisecond.”
Max Engelhardt describes Sadie as a well-adjusted young person “who is not full of herself. Pretty funny, with a great sense of humor.”
The immense talent that Spiker mentioned has been evident for many years as Engelhardt ran 5:08 in the mile when she was 11 and 4:40.16 in 2021 when she was 14.
That fully-automatic time is often referred to as an age-14 world best, although many statisticians contend that the hand-held indoor time of 4:40.1 set by Californian Mary Decker in 1973 is faster.
Jack Shepard, a statistician who has put out a highly-regarded high school track and field annual for decades, suggests calling Engelhardt’s mark the age-14 world outdoor best.
No matter how you phrase it, being at Decker’s level at any age is saying something.
Decker was a phenomenal talent who set world records in the women’s mile, 5,000, and 10,000 meters during her career. Perhaps most notably, she won the 1,500 and 3,000 meters in the inaugural IAAF — now World Athletics — Championships in Helsinki in 1983.
Engelhardt’s talent and competitive fire has led her to chase a lot of age-group and prep class records during the last few years.
The winner of a combined six individual CIF state titles in track and cross country, Engelhardt set national freshman-class and age-15 records of 4:11.79 in the 1,500 meters and 4:35.16 in the mile in 2022, and an age-16 record of 4:33.45 in the 1,600 meters last year.
Breaking the national high school outdoor record of 4:33.87 in the mile that was set by then-sophomore Katelyn Tuohy of North Rockland High in Thiells, New York, in 2018, was her No. 1 goal this season, according to Spiker. But now that she’s lowered the national record twice, Spiker has been happy to see her gain that all-important racing experience while competing against professionals.
He figures it will prove to be invaluable in the Olympic Trials, but he also admits that the Trials are not the Hoka Festival of Miles, the Music City Track Carnival, or the Portland Track Festival.
“This is the Olympic Trials,” he said, “with the absolute best of the best in the U.S.”
Max Engelhardt is aware of the differences of which Spiker spoke, but he expects Sadie to run well.
“She really gets locked in for these races,” he said. “She doesn’t get overwhelmed by circumstances. For me personally, if you would have asked me four years ago if she would get to the Trials this year, I would have said yes.”
Like Spiker, Sadie is well aware of the depth of talent in the Trials. But she is looking forward to the opportunity of mixing it up with the nation’s best over 1,500 meters.
“I feel fresh,” she said. “There is kind of that feeling that it’s toward the end of the season and you’re getting into the summer, and you just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. Other than that, my life’s still great. I feel like I’ve gained a lot of experience running in the pro races this season and that should help me in the Trials.”