To the eight men’s Husky milers who stepped to the starting line at Dempsey Indoor Center, it almost had the feel of a Friday night training run. Such was the relaxed and focused mindset that Washington coach Andy Powell had imbued in his athletes.
Yet Powell had a sense that something special could be brewing Friday at the UW Invitational. For one thing, he had assembled a crew of incredibly accomplished distance runners. They were at an optimal point in their indoor-season training, all were healthy, and their team-first mindset made what he was envisioning seem possible.
Throw in the fact that the Dempsey track is considered one of the fastest in the country, and you had all the elements for what happened: A staggering feat that reverberated across the entire track world.
“It was the right time to do something like this,” Powell said.
What they did still boggles the mind. All eight milers went under four minutes, a standard that still resonates with significance nearly 70 years after Roger Bannister broke the barrier. Only 16 Husky runners previously had gone under four minutes. To have eight racers do so in one race — with blazing times that shot to the top of the college rankings — is almost unimaginable.
“At our staff meeting, I talked about how we’re going to try to get some guys under four,” Powell said. “I didn’t want to say all of them, because then you kind of jinx it.”
Joe Waskom, a junior from Snoqualmie, won the race with a time of 3:51.90, the third-fastest mile in collegiate history, a Dempsey record and the world-leading time in 2023. But he was pushed by a slew of Huskies, including Brian Fay, right behind at 3:52.03 (tied for the fifth-fastest time in NCAA history) and Nathan Green, who had broken the 4:00 mark for the first time just two weeks earlier but ran nearly six seconds faster at 3:52.76, the seventh-fastest time ever.
After that came Kieran Lumb at 3:53.83 (12th all-time), Sam Ellis (a Husky runner competing unattached because he has only outdoor eligibility remaining) at 3:53.84, Luke Houser at 3:55.98, Aaron Ahl at 3:57.94 and Aidan Ryan at 3:59.55.
The Huskies had never had more than two runners break four minutes in the same race, which they quadrupled in one fell swoop. They are also believed to be the first school to have more than four men under 3:56.00. To put the mark in further perspective, Izaic Yorks had set the school record of 3:53.89 in 2016, which at the time was the fastest ever run indoors by an American collegian. Yorks now sits fifth on the Husky list. The top four Husky finishers lead the NCAA in 2023.
“I think this is reflective not only of our teamwork, but just how invested everyone is on this team,” Fay said. “It’s not just a couple of guys that are dead set on being the greatest. It’s the whole team that wants to be better than anything that’s ever been done before. I think Friday night was a testament to that.”
The race strategy was orchestrated by Powell, who after tremendous success coaching Oregon has built the Huskies into a powerhouse squad that this week was ranked No. 1 in the country for the first time in men’s program history.
He arranged for world-class milers Johnny Gregorek and Sam Prakel to serve as pacesetters — a crucial element to achieve such a result — and then told his runners the order in which they were to line up behind them as the race proceeded. The runners say they have total faith in Powell’s acumen — “He does all the thinking for us,” Green said.
“They’re all really close. Half of them live together,” Powell said. “It was like everyone just kind of knew to be in that line.”
Any variation would have messed up the pace and thwarted the plan. In an individual sport such as track, it was a consummate example of teamwork when it would have been easy to try to break from the pack.
“It was just everyone go as hard as you can for as long as you can,” Powell said. “And if you can help someone out along the way, let’s do it. It doesn’t matter who finishes in front of who; let’s just try to do something special as a group. I think it just set up perfectly.”
But when the pacers dropped off at about the 1,200-meter mark, the orchestrated game plan ended. The understanding all along was that for the last 300 meters or so, it was a footrace. Powell said he had no idea who was going to win.
“When we heard that bell, I think we all kind of realized, like: ‘OK, blood’s in the water. It’s time to go hunting,’ ” Green said. “We are all team members. And we all have each other’s best interests at heart. But we all are competitors as well. So, yeah, we were all trying to do the best we could to try and win. You can see it in all of [the leaders’] faces. With 50 meters to go, all our eyes are wide.”
It was Fay who surged into the lead, only to be surpassed down the stretch by Waskom, last year’s NCAA champion at 1,500 meters.
“I saw Brian come flying around me with about 300 to go, and I thought: ‘Well, here we go. Time to get going,’ ” Waskom said. “I feel like a lot of us were stuck in a line for long, we were kind of turned off, trying to relax and stay smooth. And then when Brian came flying past me, it kind of woke me up.”
When the eight sub-four-minute times became apparent, it set off jubilation among the Huskies. Even Powell, who is normally stoic during meets, said he got emotional. Though all eight had previous four-minute miles on their resume, he had pegged the chances of all eight doing so in one race at about one in 100.
They’ll have another chance at a February meet in Boston on a famously fast track to take aim at the collegiate record of 3:50.39 set by Cooper Teare of Oregon in 2021. (Times set at Dempsey are not recognized as official records because the track is considered oversized at 307 meters.) The NCAA indoor meet is set for March 10-11 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with high hopes for the well-rounded Husky squad. The historic race Friday gave a hint of what could be possible for Washington.
“I can’t really think of any other group in the entire world that’s as close as we are,” Waskom said. “But also, we’re not here just to run. Obviously, having fun is a big part of it. But we want to make world teams, and we want to set records and win championships.”
What the Huskies did Friday made the entire track world take notice.
“It’s been kind of a big deal,’’ Powell said. “People in the sport know how hard it is to do something like that. It’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing.”