Eastmark HS distance runner Bryson Nielsen is just scratching the surface
It was in the fall of 2015 when Mike Roelofs, a physcial education teacher at Patterson Elementary School and the track and field coach at Mesa Skyline High School, first came across a young Bryson Nielsen. Roelofs had started a running club at the school, hoping to get kids involved in the sport at a young age. Nielsen was one of those kids who joined.
“You take on anybody. You never know who’s going to enjoy it,” said Roelofs.
Nielsen was in the third grade at the time.
Roelofs immediately noticed how Nielsen took to the sport and seemed to like it. Then came the annual PACER test, which nearly all elementary school kids have done before. And in that first year of running for Nielsen, he got in the top 10 for the whole school. He was beating out sixth graders.
“I tell my freshmen all the time when you’re racing seniors, it’s like being a fourth grader racing a sixth graders,” Roelofs said. “This kid was a third grader who was able to beat out some of the older kids.”
Not long after, Nielsen ended up transferring in the fifth grade, where Roelofs lost contact with him up until last year when he heard from one of his athletes about a local athlete who was running some very fast times. That athlete? Nielsen.
Now, as a junior at Eastmark High in Mesa, Nielsen is approaching times that have rarely been seen in Arizona. This season, Nielsen has run 9:03.49 in the 3,200 meters. That is the third-fastest time ever from a junior in state history in the MileSplit Arizona database – the two names above him on that list, Yuma Cibola’s Bernie Montoya and Gilbert Highland’s Leo Daschbach, are considered two of the best prep distance runners ever in the state.
Nielsen ran 4:14.71 in the 1,600 meters as a sophomore last season, one of the fastest times ever in Arizona for that grade level. He’s the favorite to win the 3,200 meters at this weekend’s Arizona Interscholastic Association State Track & Field Championships.
While Nielsen found success early on, hitting his stride didn't come as naturally.
Fred Behrmann, the coach at Eastmark High, has had him since middle school. Nielsen was “getting beat quite often" back then.
“It took him a second to realize that he can be as good as anyone else. He just needed help in that self-belief,” Behrmann said. “He probably could have been the fastest in junior high and (as a) freshmen, but guys mature differently.”
That self-realization came last spring at the Nike Chandler Rotary Invitational, one of the premier meets of the outdoor track and field season. There, Nielsen ran that 4:14.71 to launch himself into state history. The photo snapped of Nielsen at the finish line showed a face of pure bewilderment.
He couldn’t even believe that it happened.
“That was a huge jump. I wasn’t expecting that,” Nielsen said. “That still shocks me today. That’s the race that changed everything. It was a huge turning point. It showed me what I was really capable of.”
Since then, he’s been one of the state’s most consistent distance runners. He ran one of the state’s top times in the 5,000 meters this past cross country season and was fourth at the AIA Division III championships.
Behrmann, who ran the steeplechase in college at BYU, has high hopes for Nielsen. He’s been closely monitoring Nielsen’s mileage, not going above 25 in a week, trying to keep the big picture in mind for Nielsen.
“I know that college coaches want to know what’s his mileage – have you just squeezed everything out of him in high school? Is there anything left to have? And I think we can give him to a college coach with a lot of potential," Behrmann said. "That’s the real long game: what is he going to do when he’s 26, when he’s really hitting his peak? I’m thinking way into the future. I really think he can be the next Leo (Daschbach) here.”
Nielsen has come a long way from when he first started the sport. Even today Nielsen still has a hard time believing where he’s at.
“If I had told myself where I would be, I probably wouldn’t believe it,” Nielsen said. “I really just did this sport for fun. I liked going out and seeing what was around me as I was going down the sidewalk and street.”
And he has turned into one of the top track and field prospects for the 2025 class in Arizona. Nielsen said that Miami and GCU have been in contact with him, as well as a handful of Division III colleges. His recruiting should start to pick up even more soon.
Nielsen has big ambitions for the rest of his high school career: he wants to run faster than 1:50 in the 800 meters, 4:10 in the 1,600 meters and 9:00 in the 3,200 meters. No runner in Arizona high school history has ever achieved that feat.
“He’s really in unprecedented waters,” Roelofs said. “The last kid that was ‘like a Leo’ was Bernie Montoya back in the day. These are like once in every four years that you get a kid that’s this fast this early. I’m just amazed at where he’s at now.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Eastmark distance runner Bryson Nielsen is just scratching the surface
