Sophia Rodriguez ran 10:20.68 and was the runner-up in a field of high schoolers at Nike Indoor Nationals.
Rodriguez is only in eighth grade, but she’s already earned All-American honors in a high school race this fall, finishing seventh in 17:55.70 at the RunningLane Cross Country Championships in Huntsville, Alabama. She’s also run some of the fastest times in the country for her age category in the one-mile and. At a February high school state track meet, she ran a sub-5 mile , the fastest time for an eighth grader, and the 19th best time for a runner of any age in the U.S. this year.
At Nike Indoor Nationals, held at the Armory in New York City, Rodriguez toed the line with some of the nation’s best high school runners. Only one of them outpaced her to break the tape, Brooke Wilson , a senior from Colorado who placed second at Nike Cross Nationals in December and will be running for Wake Forest next year.
Rodriguez positioned herself into the mid-pack early into the race, running her first mile in 5:08, and taking over as the leader around the 2K mark. Wilson retook the lead from there, but Rodriguez stayed close, with a second-mile split of 5:12. In a post-race interview, sheshe’d miscalculated the laps when she went for it at 2K and, “just kind of tried to stick on from there.
She had a successful cross country season as a seventh grader, then gave up soccer to fully focus on running, a strategy that appears to be panning out. Schuler cautioned against putting too many expectations on the young athlete at this point, and Rodriguez seems to share that long view. In her trackside interview after setting her world record, she said her biggest takeaway was to “really be patient with it” and run her own race.
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