Brittany Aveni sets all-time 800 record

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cvctrackfan

Well-known member
At the Austintown D1 regional. Geneva's Senior Brittany Aveni ran a 2:07.04 to set the Ohio girl's All-time 800 record. The old record was set in 1996 by Beamount's Candace Nicholson. Second in the race was defending State Champ Rachel Banks of Chardon who ran 2:07.34.
 
 
That's pretty fast. Congratulations to Brittany! I have to believe that record will fall again in the DI girls final next Saturday.

The quality of depth in the 800 seems to be growing by the year. The boys 800 last night at Navarre was arguably the most entertaining race of the night for the casual observer with the boys sprinting 5-wide in the final 90m.


On a side note, St. Thomas Aquinas girls broke the DIII state record in the 4x8 on Wed. night with a 9:09.65. A slightly different St. Thomas quartet held the previous DIII state record.

Kalee Soehnlen broke our county record 3 weeks ago when she ran 2:10.29. She broke the regional meet record last night and is within earshot of Stephanie Morgan's DIII state record in that event.

Incidentally, The previous Stark County girls 800 record was held by former Hoover runner Allison Peare. Hoover still holds our county's girls 4x8 record by .2 seconds with both Allison and Kelsey Peare on that relay. Their brother Matt just got his county pole vault record back at 16-8.5 after Perry's Lucas Kelley held it for about 4-6 weeks. The Peare kids' mother Janet (Baughman) was our county record holder in the 400 for about 30 years.
 
Mr. Slippery said:
That's pretty fast. Congratulations to Brittany! I have to believe that record will fall again in the DI girls final next Saturday.



The quality of depth in the 800 seems to be growing by the year. The boys 800 last night at Navarre was arguably the most entertaining race of the night for the casual observer with the boys sprinting 5-wide in the final 90m.

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Agreed on the boys 800 at Navarre. East Canton's Josh Conrad ran a textbook tactical race coming off the curve. Fun to watch.

Good luck to Brittany too. Good personality. . . makes one want to root for her.
 
Thanks for the video link. Congrats to Aveni. This should be a fun one to watch next Saturday!
 
I was at Austintown in 1996 when Candace Nicholson set the record. No one was close to her. It was amazing to see two competitors on record pace Friday night. Third place went to Figler from Walsh in 2:10. The 800 is definitely loaded this year.
 
This thread got me to research the background on Nancy Shafer(now Nancy Shafer-Boudreau), the "all-time" fastest Ohio HS girl(pre-OHSAA) at 2:04.5 in 1969 as a senior at North Canton Hoover.

She had two Olympic near-misses - 4th in the Trials 400 as a high school junior in 1968(no Olympic womens 4x400 back then), running 54.8(winner Jarvis Scott ran 53.5, going on to place 6th at Mexico City), then in 1972 Shafer again placed a heart-breaking 4th, running 2:06.7 in the Trials 800 final(winner being fellow Ohioan and 1968 Olympic champ Madeline Manning). Shafer-Boudreau now is a business professor at Bowling Green University.
 
Thanks for that lane4. I now remember seeing it but had forgotten.

Your post makes me ask if everyone been aware of Brittany Aveni's track & field transformation? She went from an outstanding HS 800 runner, spent 3-4 years at Duke getting only marginally faster and within the last year began running the 400 seriously and added the 100 and 200 this season. She has run 11.35/22.96/51.60, was ACC 400 champ, and made the final of the NCAA Championship 400. It is unusual for athletes to move down in distance but Aveni has not only done it but been highly successful.
 
Let me set this straight.

Nancy Shafer ran 2:04.5 MT at a meet in Warsaw on 29 August 1969, two days before the end of the 1969 HS season as defined by T&F News.

Aveni's time may have been an OHSAA record, but there were still 3 ladies ahead of her on the all-time list.

2:04.5 MT - Nancy Shafer (North Canton Hoover, 1969)
2:05.5 MT - Madeline Manning (Cleveland John Hay, 1966) - time converted from 880 yard run, which was STANDARD in the 1960s.
2:06.99 FAT - Susan Nash (Zanesville Rosecrans, 1984) - performance sometime in summer of 1984
 
Rather than being straight, the above list seems crooked to me.
I will never use a converted time as a record or on a metric list. This is why I maintain separate lists for yards and meters.
A performance without a venue shouldn't be considered. Seek Up once said said he wanted venues first before putting them on a ranking
 
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My own separate listing, my friend. A comparative ranking. I can tell you for a fact that T&F News kept the same types of lists that I do in all their HS annuals.
 
For me, drawing lines like this can be a matter of respect... respect for the athletes that competed for decades prior to the conversion to quasi-equivalent metric distances and decades prior to the advent of widespread FAT. As awkward as it can be, I prefer to respect the "historical" performers, multiply/divide by 0.9947 in the ranking process, add 0.24s where applicable, list 43.22 above 43.1 and explain why...

Things change... advance... track surfaces, shoe technology, training methods improve. We certainly don't eliminate current performances from record consideration or rankings even though they may have been achieved capitalizing on the benefits of modern technology or methods. Why then do we look down our collective noses at marks achieved prior to the current standards or the now-available timing methods?
 
As an FYI, I do keep manual timing lists separate for events up to & including the 400m. That is standard practice amongst international statisticians. It is above 400m where combined lists come into play.
 
Newton's Third said:
Your post makes me ask if everyone been aware of Brittany Aveni's track & field transformation? She went from an outstanding HS 800 runner, spent 3-4 years at Duke getting only marginally faster and within the last year began running the 400 seriously and added the 100 and 200 this season. She has run 11.35/22.96/51.60, was ACC 400 champ, and made the final of the NCAA Championship 400. It is unusual for athletes to move down in distance but Aveni has not only done it but been highly successful.
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I agree her development is interesting as an 800 specialist in HS, but Athing Mu has also spent significant time running the 400 this season, with outstanding results. Hopefully Aveni will return to the 800. Undoubtedly she would break 2:00 easily, with her 50.13 split suggesting her open 400 is now in the 50.5 range. Too late for the Trials this year, but the next Olympic cycle should be pretty exciting for her.
 
lane4 said:
I agree her development is interesting as an 800 specialist in HS, but Athing Mu has also spent significant time running the 400 this season, with outstanding results. Hopefully Aveni will return to the 800. Undoubtedly she would break 2:00 easily, with her 50.13 split suggesting her open 400 is now in the 50.5 range. Too late for the Trials this year, but the next Olympic cycle should be pretty exciting for her.
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The difference is that MU has always run shorter distances in addition to the 800. I agree with you concerning her possible progression. I read somewhere that she is leaning toward giving up running since she gained admittance to NC State vet school.
 
JAVMAN83 said:
As an FYI, I do keep manual timing lists separate for events up to & including the 400m. That is standard practice amongst international statisticians. It is above 400m where combined lists come into play.
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In 1980, when the OHSAA changed from yards to meters, the rule book published by the OHSAA had a table to convert yard times to meters. Here is what I remember it saying the adjustments that should be applied.
100 yards +0.9. 220 yards -0.1, 440 -0.3. 880-0.7, mile-1.6, two miles -3.2. Anyone have access to that rule book to verify if my memory serves me correctly.
 
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I can verify that there was such a conversion table. I also believe that your memory is pretty accurate (440 - .3 and 880 =.7) but maybe not your typing.... however, these conversions are for hand-held times, which are not real accurate anyway. Also, subtracting .3 off of a 1:06.3 girls 440 time is not the same as subtracting a .3 off the guy who clocked a 49.6 for a 440. Since there were so few FAT times prior to 1980, the convention was about the best we could do at the time. I would think that a 1970's hand-timed event at yards would have to be substantially superior to and FAT metric mark of today. Maybe .2-.3 faster after the conversion. IMO
 
Lancermania said:
In 1980, when the OHSAA changed from yards to meters, the rule book published by the OHSAA had a table to convert yard times to meters. Here is what I remember it saying the adjustments that should be applied.
100 yards +0.9. 220 yards -.1, 440 -3. 880-7, mile-1.6, two miles 3.2. Anyone have access to that rule book to verify if my memory serves me correctly.
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Unfortunately, I don't have that. However, the BIG problem I see immediately with using constants as conversions is that it assumes a fixed race time. Logic dictates this is not the case at all. If OHSAA did indeed publish that in 1980, they were wrong then, too. Also, you can't add 0.9 seconds to a 100 yard time to get an approximate 100 meter time (I know you already know this, Lancer). A runner hasn't run the full distance, as is the case with a 220yd race has run 200 meters. The same goes for longer yards races...they have run the full metric-equivalent distance. You & I and logic dictates their is NO way to convert 100 yards to 100 meters, but one can do the opposite as a 100 meter race can be approximated to a 100 yard time by using the standard 0.9144 factor for that race only. We also know the standard factor for converting longer yard races to metric equivalents is 0.9942. OHSAA, at least according to your info, never understood that in 1980. I'm not sure they would today.
 
My bet would be that those conversions were for the purposes of SEEDING only and not meant to be used to compare performances for records or other purposes.
 
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