“As track season approaches, I had an idea which I think could foster some excitement among our JV athletes and push us all to be better.  Basically, the goal would be for each coach to maintain a list of the number of athletes on your team that break 5:00 for the 1600 over the course of the season.  This would be an informal competition to determine which team is the "deepest."

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I would send out an email to check in on March 1st, April 1st, May 1st, and finally the week of Sectionals (May 23rd) and will compile the results and update every one of the current and final standings.  As it is a low-stakes competition, this would simply be self-reporting.  You can count any kid that breaks 5:00 either in a meet or a time trial.

I think it could be a fun way to motivate our JV guys to hit that barrier and to make them feel they are an important contributor to the team. In the spirit of full transparency, we had 32 guys run sub-5 last track season, which bested our previous mark of 27 set the year before.  I know some of you have smaller numbers of guys on the team, so perhaps we could also have a category celebrating the team with the highest percentage of team members who break 5:00.”

Noah Lawrence, Hinsdale Central HS , Hinsdale IL - 2014

Sub 5 - Sub 6 Challenge: 2025

Challenge Guidelines

1– All performances must be done between December 1, 2023 until June 15, 2024. Personal Bests from previous seasons cannot be used.

2- You can break either 5:00 or 10:30 for Boys, 6:00 or 12:45 for Girls, in either a meet or a time trial. Coaches: you are on the honor system on this. If a time is performed in a relay, the performance will be allowed.

3- I will publish a final list will be published at the beginning of July.

4- ONLY COACHES from the individual schools may submit performances. We will not accept performances from athletes, parents, or media.

5- What was a tremendous help the past three seasons was the use by Coaches of Google Charts to keep track of their athlete’s performances. Coaches would send in the link for the Google Document. All I would need to do is check the school’s document for updates.

I ENCOURAGE YOU TO USE GOOGLE DOCS TO PLEASE UPDATE ME THIS WAY.

When you set up your document, please set up the fields in this order:

Name | Grade | Time |  Meet  | Date

Example:

FIRST NAME LAST NAME | 12 | 4:30.0 | IHSA State Meet – Charleston IL | 5/29

If you use Athletic.Net to keep track of your athlete’s performances, please let me know and I will pull the performances from there.

6- You can participate in this project if your school is within the United States. This is not an ILLINOIS only endeavor. At the end of the year, we will publish complete lists with the category rankings. Indoor lists will be published at the end of March that will include only Illinois schools. A complete list of Illinois and National schools will be listed after the season (June 21).

How to Submit Performances / Contact Info

To submit performances for the

Sub 5 / Sub 6 Challenge,

please e-mail to: subfivechallenge@gmail.com

Questions about the challenge can be sent to:

Michael Newman - ILXCTF.com Editor

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subfivechallenge@gmail.com

2025 Lists

Illinois Indoor

Boys - 1600m | 3200m

Girls - 1600m | 3200m 

Final lists will be released on July 1