Teare's Pursuit of 4 Minutes Continues Saturday

After his near miss, the St. Joseph's Notre Dame star proved two things: he is fit enough, and he is hungry enough. Will he break the barrier at the Sacramento Meet of Champions?


.16 seconds is the time it takes a beam of light to travel roughly 19,000 miles. It is also the time that separated Cooper Teare from track and field immortality. Instead of being in the elite club of runners to break four minutes for the full mile while in high school, he will now be known as the fastest prep to not break four. That is, unless he accomplishes the feat this Saturday at the Sacramento Meet of Champions.

In the unforgiving sport of track and field, careers can be defined by milliseconds - and Teare knows that all too well. He captured his first two California state titles by a combined .005 seconds, but also missed out on a trip to Foot Locker Nationals in 2015 by .1 second. It seems like history has repeated itself yet again, but this time Cooper will have at least one shot at redemption.

On Saturday when Teare takes another crack at the four minute barrier, he will be joined by Luis Grijalva who is coming off a 3:47.17 1500m PR at the Cardinal Classic last weekend. Grijalva's time converts to 4:05 for the full mile. The group will be led by pacer Brandon Bandley, a senior from Los Alamitos High School in Orange County who owns a 1:55.11 800m PR. In his last outing, Teare's 800 split was a shade over 2:00, so the goal is for Bandley to take them through at around 1:58-1:59 and potentially pull them along to the 1k mark. As we saw two weeks ago, Teare is easily in the best shape of his life and is on the cusp of making history.

One thing that has not been talked about however are Teare's chances of breaking Jim Ryun's high school competition record of 3:58.3. This record has was set in 1965 and has not been touched since. Out of the nine preps to break four, only three including Ryun were in HS competitions with the other two being Lukas Verzbicas and Michael Slagowski.

MileSplitCA will be on-site for photo and video coverage of the invitational section of the SMOC, including Cooper's "Sub-4" attempt!

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