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Leah Starkey just blew apart the course at Ocean County Park with an electrifying and jaw-dropping performance for the ages!!
The indefatigable star at Ocean Township opened her season on Friday by throwing down a 16:04 in the Junior Division race on the fast layout in Lakewood, the fastest 5K ever run by a girl in NJ history!
Starkey's time smashed the course record of 16:44 that she ran at the Shore Conference Championships last year, and it's 12 seconds faster than the 16:16 that Blair Bartlett of Lawrenceville ran last October on the course at Peddie, which was the previous fastest 5K ever run by a NJ girl in an XC race.
Obviously there is no such thing as a state record when it comes to cross-country times because of how differfent every course is, but this epic run by Starkey certainly puts the course record at Holmdel Park in her crosshairs!!!!
Last year, Starkey ran 16:44 at OCP and then ripped a 17:14 to win the Meet of Champions title at Holmdel, a difference of 30 seconds. Using that same conversion after this 16:04 puts Starkey at 16:34 at Holmdel. With two months until the M of C, that puts her in range to make a run at the Holmdel CR of 16:21, set by the great Katelyn Tuohy at tghe 2018 Shore Coaches Invitational when she was a junior at North Rockland in New York.
Starkey, who finished seventh at the Brooks National XC Championships last December in San Diego, is coming off one of the greastest track seasons in NJ history last spring.
At the Nike Outdoor National Championships in June, Starkey stopped the clock at 9:46.57 to finish first and take down the national sophomore record and the NJ record!!!
Her time of 9:46.57, which is No. 4 in U.S. high school history, shattered the national high school sophomore record of 9:54.38, which was set by the great Jane Hedengren of Timpview in Utah when she won the girls' 2-mile championship at Nike Outdoor Nationals in 2023. Hedengren owns the national high school record of 9:17.75, whcih she ran in 2025.
Starkey also demolished the New Jersey record of 10:00.79 that senior Allison Lee of West Windsor-Plainsboro North senior Allison Lee ran at the New Balance Nationals the day before.
It was the second national title for Starkey, who also won the 2-mile title at the Nike National Indoor Championship in March in New York in 9:48.02. Starkey has also won 3 Meet of Champions titles in her career, XC in 2025, and the outdoor 3,200 in 2025 and '26.
