It's no secret that California high school girls have been a hot topic in the track world during 2025, but most of that weight fell on Sadie Engelhardt, rightfully so. Engelhardt was on a quest to break the indoor mile high school national record, and she did that at the 117th Millrose Games with a 4:27.97.
Last Sunday at Nike Indoor Nationals, Jane Hedengren broke Engelardt's national record, taking the record from California.
However this wasn't a sad day for California Girls because a group of four girls would also rewrite the California record books.
Rylee Blade was in the record-breaking race at NIN and finished 3rd place by running 4:42.74, making her the fifth fastest Californian in history. Over in Boston, Hanne Thomsen, Chiara Dailey, and Jordin Lieberman ran indoor mile PRs at New Balance Nationals Indoor.
Hanne Thomsen led the girls with a 3rd place finish at 4:40.58, making her the fourth fastest California high school girl in history. Chiara Dailey (4:44.94) and Jordin Lieberman (4:47.13) ran the sixth and seventh fastest times in California high school girls' history in that same race.
The most shocking part of this impressive statistic is that California does not have an indoor track. These girls will probably struggle to count on two hands how many times they've raced on an indoor track during high school.
Despite all these great times at indoor nationals, the 1600m has not slowed down! We are on the cusp of two major weekends, during which we could potentially see big changes to the outdoor 1600m rankings.
Weekend of March 21-22
Weekend of March 28-28
Before we get to these meets that will produce amazing distance performances, let's take a look at where the current mile/1600m rankings stand.