Talented class of middle-distance runners eye Delaware's longest-standing running record
Forty years ago, in his final race as a Dover High Senator, Bruce Harris completed two laps around the track in one minute, 49 seconds and four-tenths of a second.
The time that has passed has distinguished Harris' 800-meter run as one of the greatest performances in Delaware high school track and field history. It is the longest-standing state record of all time in an individual running event, rivaled in longevity only by the throws of Howard's Terry Thomas and the vertical leap of Tower Hill's John Carroll.
For 30 years, no one ran within four seconds of Harris' record. But there's reason to believe the current group of middle-distance runners, who have already gone about rewriting Delaware's record book, have a chance to beat the record. The time — 1:49.5 when converted to modern timing — is on the minds of Salesianum's Ethan Walther and A.I. du Pont's Camerin Williams.
"That would be my dream to get that," says Walther.
"If I accomplish that, I will have done everything I wanted to," says Williams.
A wave of challengers appeared in the past decade — runners with sprinting pedigree and distance fortitude — but still no one has finished within two seconds of Harris' time in the official high school season. Walther and Williams could be different. They have each hit benchmarks in the indoor season and the early weeks of the outdoor season that none of those challengers of recent history accomplished.
In consecutive weeks, Walther set indoor state records in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 meters. He is the first to hold the three records at once. After winning the 1,600 at the indoor state meet, Walther led three runners under the 800 state meet record in a performance that matched his state-best mark. He ran as fast as 1:53.22 later in the indoor season and opened his outdoor season with a 1:53.63 at the University of Delaware's Delaware Invitational. Walther won the race by four and a half seconds.
Williams finished second to Walther at the indoor state meet. A month later, he broke 50 seconds in the 400 meters for the first time. The performance qualified him for New Balance Nationals in Boston where he ran 48.46 in qualifying to reach the final.
He placed fifth in the final in 47.88, completing a drop of more than four seconds from his season-opening time. Williams' performance was more than a half second faster than Delaware's 400 indoor state record.
Two weeks ago in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Williams finished third in a national-caliber field of 800 runners in 1:51.81, the third-fastest time in state history and the fastest 800 ever run by a Delaware high schooler in April. The next day, he ran 48.16 to win the 400.
"He's a pure-bred athlete," said Jazonte Levan, Seaford's 200-meter state record holder.
Walther and Williams' record pursuit will benefit from chances against out-of-state competition as well as one of the deepest pools of 800-meter runners in Delaware history. Already seven athletes have run faster than 1:58. That doesn't include Ian Cain of Caesar Rodney, last year's Division I and Meet of Champions winner, who shouldn't be counted out in his own right as the owner of a 1:54.44 personal best.
But there's a reason why the record has stood for so long. "It really depends on the day," says Nicolas Pizarro, a 2022 Tatnall graduate who ran the second fastest 800 in state history.
Everything must break right.
Just as it did for Bruce Harris on a Monday night at Franklin Field 40 years ago.
'I don't even know I understood the magnitude'
The race was supposed to be a few days earlier, but a rainstorm pushed it back to June 4, 1984.
Harris was coming off a 1:51.9 effort at the state meet, which lowered his own state record. Now, he was up against the best runners of the region at the Track and Field Coaches Association of Greater Philadelphia Invitational at the University of Pennsylvania's Franklin Field, the Meet of Champions of its day.
"It was just one of those days where you got on the track and you just knew you were going to do well," Harris said Saturday. "My training that I had prior to it convinced me I was going to do great things."
Harris split 51.5 seconds through 400 meters then pulled away from second-place finisher Jack Snyder of Archbishop Ryan, winning by about 20 meters.
"I wanted to go after it right from the start and went out faster than I have all year," Harris told The Morning News at the time. "I trained hard for this ever since the high school season ended, but I never thought my time would be this good."
The state record at the start of Harris' career was established by Mount Pleasant's Sean Kelleher, a 1:53.0 at the same Penn meet in 1977. Harris lowered it three and a half seconds, an eternity in the middle-distance event. It placed him among the nation's best runners.
"I don't even know I understood the magnitude of that race when I finished," Harris said looking back. "I was just a 17-year-old kid just trying to compete."
Harris went on to race at Villanova, earning All-American status for his role on the Wildcats' indoor 4x800 relay. Six months after graduating he entered the police academy. A 32-year career with the Delaware State Police followed.
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Harris started coaching three years ago when his youngest son, Gabe, started in the sport. A sophomore at Caesar Rodney, he is one of the state's best hurdlers. Harris works with the team's middle-distance runners.
He gives them a mix of aerobic- and anaerobic-focused workouts, inspired by his career at Dover under coach Jack Gardner and Villanova. But perhaps more importantly he shares lessons on the mental aspect of racing.
"I'm just trying to merge the mental part of racing with the physical part," said Harris, a member of the Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame. "Once you get those two together, everything else just opens up their ability to break through barriers."
'Finding a good race'
Delaware went 31 years without another runner that could beat Kelleher's old state record, let alone someone to challenge Harris' 1:49.5.
The door to the next era of First State 800 runners opened in 2015 when Newark's Jarod Wilson and Tatnall's Ben Boswell ran 1:52.04 and 1:52.07, respectively, in separate races. But they only raced head to head once at that year's Meet of Champions, which combines Division I and Division II. Wilson took the win but failed to break 1:53. Two weeks earlier, he had run the fastest recorded 4x800 split in state history, a 1:49.7 at the New Castle County Championships.
Mount Pleasant's Johnelle Joe placed third in that Meet of Champions race as a sophomore and set Harris' record as an ultimate goal. Two years later, he produced what was at the time the fourth-fastest 800 in state history in a county meet win over Salesianum's George Steinhoff.
"I was always focused on time. I think that's what kind of caught me up, not breaking the state record," said Joe, who went on to run at Oklahoma and Manhattan College. "I was always like, 'I want to run this, I want to run that,' but I didn't race to win."
The 2019 Meet of Champions produced the fastest high school 800 on Delaware soil with Charter of Wilmington's Chris Brown taking the win in 1:51.91 over Tatnall's Napoleon Hernandez and Dover's Nathanael Guy. Brown took the race out in 54 seconds, breaking a string of tactical races that year and helping him produce a nearly three-second personal best.
Pizarro, now a sophomore at Penn, did not consider himself an 800 specialist when he ran 1:50.90 at a postseason meet in St. Louis, Missouri in 2022. He spent much of the year running 3,200s and initially wanted to run the mile at the meet, but wasn't accepted. The 800 ended up offering what he described as an ideal set-up to run fast. Pacers took the field out in 54 seconds, which helped Pizarro unlock an extra gear. He finished behind the winner by nine hundredths of a second.
"I think one of the biggest parts of running well in the 800, for me at least, was finding a good race," said Pizarro, who dropped seven seconds from his season opener that year.
Pizarro said both runners should be building on a strong fitness base at this point in the spring — at the cross country state meet Walther won the Division I title and Williams won the Division II title — before fine tuning in the final weeks of the season.
"You have to be able to run a really fast 400," Harris said. "My 400s were always, first lap, 52 seconds. I got to the point where I was comfortable running that fast."
Walther and Williams could race head to head at the New Castle County Championships May 11 and the Meet of Champions May 22. They will be in separate divisions at the state meet the weekend in between.
Their schools are also both scheduled to run at the always-fast Hoka Henderson Invitational in West Chester, Pennsylvania May 3. Of course, one or both of them could challenge the record alone at another race, too.
"You can't expect to have someone with you when you're chasing history," Williams said.
Harris never expected his record to last as long as it has. When athletes would approach his time in years past he would hear from friends close to the sport and follow their progress, but he wasn't around the track like he is now.
He thinks it's possible, repeating the line "records are made to be broken."
Harris has talked about running with Williams, who is friends with his son Gabe and who Harris said is "right there." If the record goes down at the state meet or Meet of Champions, Harris will be in attendance.
"I would be the first one to shake his hand," Harris said.
Brandon Holveck reports on high school sports for The News Journal. Contact him at bholveck@delawareonline.com.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Why the 40-year-old Delaware 800 record could go down this spring
