Highland’s Leo Daschbach runs rare sub-4 mile
It took just .46 seconds for Leo Daschbach to reaffirm his status as the greatest high school boys distance runner in Arizona history on Saturday night. The Gilbert Highland senior, who is also
reigning Boys Track and Field and Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year, won the last race of his legendary high school running career at the Quarantine Clasico at Oak Ridge High School (El Dorado Hills, Calif.), finishing under the coveted 4-minute mark on a 3:59:54 time.
That puts him in ninth place in the nation’s history among the 11 boys who broke the sub-4 mile and the first to reach the mark since 2017. Daschbach is the fourth person reach that time alongside Jim Ryun, Lukas Verzbicas and Michael Slagowski in a high schoolonly race, according to LetsRun.
“I’m really not surprised because this kid is a onepercenter. I’ve been in this sport 50 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Highland boys track and field coach David Montgomery said.
The achievement makes Daschbach the best miler in state history. In addition, Daschbach got his second all-time national mark within a year after earned the second-best all-time mark in the 5K at the Desert Twi
light cross country meet in September.
On the final 200 meters of the mile race, Daschbach stormed from behind and went from the fourth to first place runner in his six-person heat and ran a stunning final lap. Knowing his clocked time at the 3:02.74 minute mark in the penultimate lap, he needed to catch up on 57.25.
“I was pretty much just focused on the moment and the race, making the right moves and when to surge,” Daschbach said via text message. “I didn’t even know how close I was until I came across 100 meters left and saw 3:46 on the clock.”
The Washington commit increasingly pulled away from his competition down the home stretch, leaving Valor Christian (Highlands Ranch, Col.) senior runner Cole Sprout to end in second place. Sprout just missed the sub-4 at 4:02.42.
Similar to the Quarantine Clasico, Sprout also came in second behind Daschbach at the Desert Twilight by a mere 2 seconds.
Daschbach didn’t believe that he could hit the sub-4. However, Montgomery said that Daschbach gained a new confidence over the past few weeks in his workouts and that this rare feat was within his reach.
“He (recently) ran another mile at 4:07 and from his time trial, he just didn’t feel it that day. He’s really been crushing workouts before this thing got going with these six kids doing this (Quarantine Clasico) in California,” Montgomery said. “His leg speed is just phenomenal. That last lap, you can’t teach that. He’s very competitive and he doesn’t really care about records. He runs to win.
“He told me this a couple years ago: ‘Coach, if you put me in a race, I’m running to win. If I win, great, and if I don’t, that’s OK, too.’”