AUSTIN — Southlake Carroll’s Caden Leonard talked last year at the Class 6A state track meet about how he had been working with a mental coach to focus on just winning races rather than worrying about his time.
Saturday morning, the North Carolina signee got to enjoy the best of both worlds — a state championship and a new state meet-record time.
“The goal was to just go out and win, but it’s pretty cool,” Leonard said. “I remember my freshman year the state meet [record] got broken. The previous one before that was Reed Brown. After the race I told my dad that by the time I graduated I was going to get the record back. I didn’t intend to do it today, but it just happened like that.”
Brown, a former Carroll phenom, is the only high school runner from Texas to ever break 4 minutes in the mile, running 3:59.30 in 2017. He is now a Carroll assistant coach, and Leonard has been able to seek advice from him while running workouts designed by his father, Carroll coach Justin Leonard.
“It’s nice to just have him at practice,” Caden Leonard said. “He talks to the team.”
Leonard said he still uses his mental coach periodically.
“I haven’t done it in a little bit, but I’ll still use it sometimes,” he said. “It’s nice to have when you’ve got to stay on top of your stuff.”
Saturday’s 3,200 win gave Leonard seven individual state titles in his career when combining track and cross country. Last year, Leonard completed the distance triple crown, winning state titles in cross country and the 1,600 and 3,200 in track. He completed the first two legs of that this year but finished fifth in the 1,600 later Saturday night, running 4:13.74.
With three laps remaining in the eight-lap 3,200, there was a pack of five runners at the front that Leonard was a part of. He didn’t take the lead until right before the last lap, then he closed with a 1:02.22 final 400 meters — his fastest lap of the race — to hold off Denton Guyer sophomore Ruel Newberry, who finished second in 8:53.23.
Leonard has come close to becoming the second Texas boy to break 4 minutes for a true mile, running 4:00.07 indoors and 4:01.02 and 4:01.55 outdoors. The mile is 9 meters longer than the 1,600 that is run at the UIL state meet, but Leonard will have one last chance to break 4 minutes before college when he runs at the Festival of Miles after the UIL season is over.
“It would mean a lot, but me and my dad had a goal in high school that we weren’t going to try to burn me out in high school,” Leonard said. “So we’ve kept it pretty low-key, so it’s not the end all be all if I don’t do it. My plan is to go into those meets and try to win, so the time will take care of itself.”