Natalie Dumas’s 51.87 at sectionals isn’t just tied for the fastest 400 in New Jersey history, it’s one of the fastest in U.S. scholastic track history.
Dumas won the South Jersey Group 4 race Saturday at Pennsauken and tied the state record set by four-time Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin, who ran 51.87 at the 2016 Meet of Champions at Central Regional in Berkeley Township.
I put together what I believe is a complete list of all sub-52 performances made by U.S. high school athletes in competitions held during the high school season or in meets that are an extension of the high school season. So that includes various national meets or U.S. or World Under 20 but not summer track competitions or Junior Olympics or AAU meets (even if they’re earlier than World Juniors, for example).
Dumas’s time is tied for 20th-fastest in U.S. scholastic history and makes her the 26th sub-52 performer.
Of those 23, four were in the 1970s, three in the 1980s, none in the 1990s, five in the 2000s, eight in the 2010s and six so far in the 2020s.
Dumas will be racing next month at West Philly Nationals instead of USATF Under-20s – they’re on the same weekend this year – but she does have a chance to qualify for USATF Senior Nationals, scheduled for July 31-Aug. 3 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore.
Dumas has run 51.87 in the 400 and 58.37 in the intermediates so far. The A standards in her primary events are 51.00 for the 400 and 56.00 for the intermediates, and the B standards are 52.50 and 58.00. The way it works is everyone with the A standard gets in and if there are fewer than 32 entries with the A standard, the field is filled with the next-fastest entrants until the field fills up.
USATF only accepts qualifying marks from specific USATF-approved meets: “All entry performances must be legal marks that have been achieved at a USATF-sanctioned meet or at a meet listed on the World Athletics Calendar,” according to the meet regs.
So if she can find the right meets before the midnight July 22 deadline, Dumas has a chance to qualify for the U.S. Championships, especially in the 400, where she’s already well under the B standard.
One other note: Without going really deep into old Track and Field News copies from the 1970s and 1980s, there’s no way to determine where Dumas ranks all-time among high school juniors. But her time Saturday is fastest by a U.S. 11th-grader since 2016, when Lynna Irby of Pike High in Indianapolis ran 51.39 at the World Under-20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, and McLaughlin ran her 51.87. The only other 11th-grader to run that fast in the last 20 years is Kadecia Baird of Medgar Evers Prep in Brooklyn ran ran 51.04 at World Juniors in Barcelona in 2012.
Here’s my best attempt at an all-time U.S. sub-52 400-meter dash list! To come up with this list, I used the MileSplit database and my library of Jack Sheppard old U.S. High School Annuals.
All-Time U.S. 400-Meter Dash List
50.69 … Sanya Richards [St. Thomas Aquinas, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.], 2002
50.74 … Monique Henderson [Morse, San Diego], 2000
50.87 … Denean Howard [Granada Hills, Calif.], 1982
50.90 … Sheila Ingram [Washington, D.C.], 1976
51.04 … Kadecia Baird [Medgar Evers Prep, Brooklyn], 2012
51.17 … Lauren Lewis [Prosper (Texas)], 2023
51.17 … Kayla Davis [William A. Hough, Cornelius, N.C.], 2019
51.21 … Alexis Holmes [Cheshire (Ct.) Academy], 2018
51.39 … Lynna Irby [Pike, Indianapolis], 2016
51.44 … Tyra Cox [Northwestern, Miami], 2025
51.57 … Skyler Franklin [Monteverde (Fla.) Academy], 2024
51.57 … Jan’taijah Ford [Northeast, Oakland Park, Fla.], 2019
51.63 … Jessica Beard [Euclid, Ohio], 2007
51.09 … Sherri Howard [San Bernadino], 1979
51.45 … Ericka Harris [Gig Harbor, Wash.], 1981
51.63 … Jessica Beard [Euclid, Ohio], 2007
51.75 … Diane Dixon [Brooklyn], 1982
51.77 … Jameesia Ford [Jack Britt, Fayetteville, N.C.], 2023
51.87 … Sydney McLaughlin [Union Catholic, Scotch Plains], 2016
51.87 … Natalie Dumas [Eastern, Voorhees, N.J.], 2025
51.91 … Mabie Ferguson [Pomona, Calif.], 1972
51.92 … Arria Minor [East, Denver], 2018
51.94 … Jennie Gorham [Kansas City], 1979
51.96 … Brandi Cross [Fort Bend, Texas], 2006
51.98 … Athing Mu [Trenton, N.J.], 2020
51.99 … Shae Anderson [Norco (Calilf.)], 2017
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 