Cool Story (no politics please)
Lake Oswego High School junior Mia Brahe-Pedersen won the mixed-gender 100 meters in 11.08 seconds on May 6 at the Summit Invitational in Bend, Ore. JOE KLINE/THE BULLETIN
By Rachel Bachman
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Updated May 14, 2023 at 5:19 pm ET
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The fans packed into the high school track meet stands stared at the start line. The discus throwers paused. And the sprinter everyone was watching, a 17-year-old girl, burst from the starting blocks, strided neck-and-neck with her competitors, then surged across the finish line ahead of them all—including four boys.
The rare mixed-gender 100-meter race, at the Summit Invitational on May 6 in Bend., Ore., was built just for Mia Brahe-Pedersen. That’s because the junior at Lake Oswego (Ore.) High School has had an increasingly hard time finding decent competition.
She finished in a personal-best 11.08 seconds, making her the third-fastest U.S. high school girl of all time, according to Track & Field News. Brahe-Pedersen even beat her friend and prom date, Lake Oswego senior Ethan Park, who finished fourth in 11.38 seconds.
“It was just a really cool, special moment, to see her beat everybody,” said Park, a receiver and honorable-mention all-state cornerback on Lake Oswego’s state-quarterfinals football team. “It was amazing to be a part of that.”
Fueled by talent, training and tech, Brahe-Pedersen has gone from being a fast soccer player to a track specialist aiming to be the best female high school sprinter ever.
“When practice is hard, the first thing my coach says is, ‘Hey, have that national record in the back of your mind,’” Brahe-Pedersen said. “We’re really talking about both the national records, the 100 and the 200. And if it can’t happen this season, it’ll happen next season.”
Her fastest wind-legal time of 11.08 seconds is .14 seconds behind the national record set in 2019 by Briana Williams of Northeast High in Oakland Park, Fla. Williams won gold on Jamaica’s 4×100 relay team at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Brahe-Pedersen’s personal best in the 200 meters—also run May 6 in a mixed-gender race in which she finished third—is 22.61 seconds. That’s .5 seconds behind Allyson Felix’s 22.11 seconds set in 2003—the year before Felix launched an Olympic career that culminated in 11 medals, a record for a female track athlete.
Brahe-Pedersen (pronounced BRAH-hey Pedd-err-senn) goes through most days as a regular teenager living in a leafy Portland suburb. She recently took an AP stats final, enjoys studying oceanography—“a good mix of marine biology but then also, like, geoscience and earth science,” she said—and occasionally bakes cookies.
On the track, it’s clear how atypical she is. Her friend Sophia Beckmon of nearby Oregon City High School is one of the state’s few female sprinters who comes close to her times. Brahe-Pedersen planned to spend the morning before Saturday’s prom training at the gym—“just quick explosive movements with heavier weight.”
Always the fastest girl on the soccer field, she quit the sport to focus on track. In recent years she’s worked to hone her technique with private coaches including John Parks, who’s now Lake Oswego’s track and field coach, and Hashim Hall at the Inner Circle Track Club. Hall called Brahe-Pedersen naturally talented with “amazing” running mechanics at full speed, and said she could still improve on her start.
Such investments have been worth it to her parents, says her father, Christian, even though college track teams often award partial rather than full athletic scholarships. He does technical recruiting in the IT field, and her mother, Pamela Cosper, is an account executive in software. Brahe-Pedersen has made official visits to the University of Georgia and Southern California.
Like many other top high school sprinters, Brahe-Pedersen races in “super spikes,” the new-wave shoes that feature superlight foams and rigid plates. Adoption of the shoes in the past couple of years has coincided with a surge in four-minute miles at the college level. She said she feels like the shoes make a difference, along with improved training and methods.
Sieg Lindstrom, editor of Track & Field News, said the limited recent data “seems to show a marked correlation between the arrival of super shoes and the eye-popping sprint performances we’re seeing.” The improved coaching, training methods and facilities used by Brahe-Pedersen and a few other top high school athletes also appear to be greatly benefiting them, Lindstrom said.
Brahe-Pedersen says the key to her recent personal bests was low-tech: fast opponents. Summit High track and field coach Dave Turnbull, who organizes the Summit Invitational, got permission from the Oregon School Activities Association to run mixed-gender races in the 100 and 200 meters. Summit has an unusual nine-lane track, so Turnbull entered the five fastest girls and four fastest boys from the 21 schools competing at the meet.
“Our boys were excited to race against Mia,” Turnbull said. “They thought, ‘This is a future Olympian.’”
Brahe-Pedersen lowered her 100-meter state record. In the 200 meters—in a sudden hailstorm, no less—she finished behind two boys but her time of 22.61 seconds broke a tie to claim the girls’ state 200-meter record outright. Previously, both girls’ sprint records had been held by Margaret Johnson-Bailes, an eventual Olympic gold medalist, since 1968.
With the results of the Oregon state high school meet later this month all but a foregone conclusion, Brahe-Pedersen is looking to lower her times at Nike Outdoor Nationals next month at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field. And yes, she’s aiming for the 2024 U.S. Olympic trials next summer.
“Absolutely,” she said. “If I can’t make the team, then of course I’d like to go to the trials, because you can’t really get better competition than that.”
Write to Rachel Bachman at Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com
The High School Sprint Phenom Who Beat Her Prom Date
Oregon’s Mia Brahe-Pedersen is already the third-fastest girl in U.S. history. She got her best marks in 100- and 200-meter races with boys.
Lake Oswego High School junior Mia Brahe-Pedersen won the mixed-gender 100 meters in 11.08 seconds on May 6 at the Summit Invitational in Bend, Ore. JOE KLINE/THE BULLETIN
By Rachel Bachman
Follow
Updated May 14, 2023 at 5:19 pm ET
SAVE
SHARE
TEXT
89
Listen to article
Length (6 minutes)
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The fans packed into the high school track meet stands stared at the start line. The discus throwers paused. And the sprinter everyone was watching, a 17-year-old girl, burst from the starting blocks, strided neck-and-neck with her competitors, then surged across the finish line ahead of them all—including four boys.
The rare mixed-gender 100-meter race, at the Summit Invitational on May 6 in Bend., Ore., was built just for Mia Brahe-Pedersen. That’s because the junior at Lake Oswego (Ore.) High School has had an increasingly hard time finding decent competition.
She finished in a personal-best 11.08 seconds, making her the third-fastest U.S. high school girl of all time, according to Track & Field News. Brahe-Pedersen even beat her friend and prom date, Lake Oswego senior Ethan Park, who finished fourth in 11.38 seconds.
“It was just a really cool, special moment, to see her beat everybody,” said Park, a receiver and honorable-mention all-state cornerback on Lake Oswego’s state-quarterfinals football team. “It was amazing to be a part of that.”
Fueled by talent, training and tech, Brahe-Pedersen has gone from being a fast soccer player to a track specialist aiming to be the best female high school sprinter ever.
“When practice is hard, the first thing my coach says is, ‘Hey, have that national record in the back of your mind,’” Brahe-Pedersen said. “We’re really talking about both the national records, the 100 and the 200. And if it can’t happen this season, it’ll happen next season.”
Her fastest wind-legal time of 11.08 seconds is .14 seconds behind the national record set in 2019 by Briana Williams of Northeast High in Oakland Park, Fla. Williams won gold on Jamaica’s 4×100 relay team at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Brahe-Pedersen’s personal best in the 200 meters—also run May 6 in a mixed-gender race in which she finished third—is 22.61 seconds. That’s .5 seconds behind Allyson Felix’s 22.11 seconds set in 2003—the year before Felix launched an Olympic career that culminated in 11 medals, a record for a female track athlete.
Brahe-Pedersen (pronounced BRAH-hey Pedd-err-senn) goes through most days as a regular teenager living in a leafy Portland suburb. She recently took an AP stats final, enjoys studying oceanography—“a good mix of marine biology but then also, like, geoscience and earth science,” she said—and occasionally bakes cookies.
On the track, it’s clear how atypical she is. Her friend Sophia Beckmon of nearby Oregon City High School is one of the state’s few female sprinters who comes close to her times. Brahe-Pedersen planned to spend the morning before Saturday’s prom training at the gym—“just quick explosive movements with heavier weight.”
Always the fastest girl on the soccer field, she quit the sport to focus on track. In recent years she’s worked to hone her technique with private coaches including John Parks, who’s now Lake Oswego’s track and field coach, and Hashim Hall at the Inner Circle Track Club. Hall called Brahe-Pedersen naturally talented with “amazing” running mechanics at full speed, and said she could still improve on her start.
Such investments have been worth it to her parents, says her father, Christian, even though college track teams often award partial rather than full athletic scholarships. He does technical recruiting in the IT field, and her mother, Pamela Cosper, is an account executive in software. Brahe-Pedersen has made official visits to the University of Georgia and Southern California.
Like many other top high school sprinters, Brahe-Pedersen races in “super spikes,” the new-wave shoes that feature superlight foams and rigid plates. Adoption of the shoes in the past couple of years has coincided with a surge in four-minute miles at the college level. She said she feels like the shoes make a difference, along with improved training and methods.
Sieg Lindstrom, editor of Track & Field News, said the limited recent data “seems to show a marked correlation between the arrival of super shoes and the eye-popping sprint performances we’re seeing.” The improved coaching, training methods and facilities used by Brahe-Pedersen and a few other top high school athletes also appear to be greatly benefiting them, Lindstrom said.
Brahe-Pedersen says the key to her recent personal bests was low-tech: fast opponents. Summit High track and field coach Dave Turnbull, who organizes the Summit Invitational, got permission from the Oregon School Activities Association to run mixed-gender races in the 100 and 200 meters. Summit has an unusual nine-lane track, so Turnbull entered the five fastest girls and four fastest boys from the 21 schools competing at the meet.
“Our boys were excited to race against Mia,” Turnbull said. “They thought, ‘This is a future Olympian.’”
Brahe-Pedersen lowered her 100-meter state record. In the 200 meters—in a sudden hailstorm, no less—she finished behind two boys but her time of 22.61 seconds broke a tie to claim the girls’ state 200-meter record outright. Previously, both girls’ sprint records had been held by Margaret Johnson-Bailes, an eventual Olympic gold medalist, since 1968.
With the results of the Oregon state high school meet later this month all but a foregone conclusion, Brahe-Pedersen is looking to lower her times at Nike Outdoor Nationals next month at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field. And yes, she’s aiming for the 2024 U.S. Olympic trials next summer.
“Absolutely,” she said. “If I can’t make the team, then of course I’d like to go to the trials, because you can’t really get better competition than that.”
Write to Rachel Bachman at Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com
