Before the starting gun, Ethan Walther stood with his arms folded at the edge of the banked track at the famed Armory in New York's Washington Heights.

A 13 sticker covering the back half of the Salesianum lettering across his yellow uniform let everyone know he was the last man accepted to this invitational heat.

Four minutes and 14 seconds later, he broke the tape with his right hand pointing toward the sky, his eyes wide and his tongue hanging out.

The junior who had wanted to crack 4:20 for the first time had just broken away from two of the nation's best distance runners in the final 200-meter lap and set the Delaware state record.

More than six hours later, Middletown's Isabelle Walsh toed the same starting line, already with the second-fastest indoor mile in state history in her legs.

She led the 800 meters wire to wire, imposing a fast pace on a field that included three Tatnall runners who had brought the school back to the national cross-country meet five weeks earlier. Walsh's 2:11.44 cracked the state record by more than two seconds, an eternity in the middle distance event.

Walther and Walsh are leaders of a cohort of Delaware runners who continue to rewrite the state's leaderboards.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted competition in 2020, the group has broken 12 state records in indoor and outdoor track and field. The tally puts the current decade on about the same record-setting pace as the previous decade in which state records changed hands more than 50 times.

The top runners in Delaware are among the nation's best.

The week prior to and the week following his record-setting mile run, Walther set state records in the 800 and 3,200. His times in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 place him eighth, 12th and 11th in the country. Walsh is fourth in the 800 and ninth in the 1,600.

Tatnall's Abby Downin, who ran an 800 time worthy of a state record in a second-place finish to Walsh, is seventh nationally in the 800 and 10th in the 1,600.

"It is so exciting and I am so glad that over the course of the four years that I've been here the competition has grown," Walsh said. "I feel like I need it. If the people around me are getting faster, that's going to make me faster."

In two weeks, Walther and Walsh will be among the top contenders at the state indoor meet in Landover, Maryland. Then it's back to the East Coast circuit to chase fast times. Walther and Walsh will both return to the Armory on Feb. 9 to run the mile at the Millrose Games, one of the world's most prestigious indoor meets which features high school, college and professional competition on an invite-only basis.

Walther and Walsh reached this point in their running careers on divergent paths.

Neither viewed themselves as a championship runner entering high school. Walther was a lacrosse player, Walsh a figure skater. But both now share a commitment to the finer details of the sport — prioritizing rest, mobility and strength work — that has allowed them to excel.

When Walther broke the 1,600 record, Chris Warren, his coach at Delaware Military Academy his freshman and sophomore years, shared on social media a finish line photo with the text, "If you didn't see this coming then you've been sleeping." He had every indication this — becoming one of the fastest distance runners in Delaware history — was possible.

"It was pretty evident there was going to be something special about him right from the get-go," Warren said.

From a broken collarbone to a track triple winner

Walther's lacrosse career ended with a broken collarbone and a broken wrist.

In a one-on-one drill in the early part of his freshman season, Walther got knocked down after making a shot. He popped back up and told his coach he was ok, but by the time it was his turn to go again, he could barely move his right arm.

Walther chose DMA in part to play lacrosse with his brother, Wyatt. They were going to overlap for one season. A dream spring for a lacrosse family like the Walthers. But now it was over and quickly it became clear that running was the sport for Ethan.

Walther had run cross-country in the fall and was talked into staying on for indoor track. He had enough talent to run in the freshman heat of the 800 at a national indoor meet that winter. After the injuries, it became a logical choice to run all three seasons the next year, where collisions and broken bones are less prevalent.

Over the summer, Walther texted Warren regularly. "How can I make this year, my year?" he'd ask. He ran the hills of Brandywine almost every day.

It translated into a breakout season. Walther won the Division II race at the cross-country state meet and swept the distance events outdoors. Also the anchor of DMA's second-place 4x400-meter relay, he contributed more than a third of DMA's points, leading to the school's highest state meet finish in program history.

"I think he was pretty wiped but there was such an adrenaline from winning," Warren said. "If he sees an opportunity to win, he’s going to take it."

In the winter of his sophomore year, it became clear to Walther that DMA was not a perfect fit for him. He wanted to be challenged more academically and have more say in his schedule. A lot of his middle school friends went to Salesianum so he shadowed there one day and walked away impressed. At practice that afternoon, he talked through his decision with Warren.

"I told him what is most important is that he finds happiness," said Warren, who ended up stepping away from coaching at the end of the spring. "He was going to be good no matter where he went. At Sallies, he probably has the resources to flourish even more."

In his first season at Salesianum, Walther again won at cross-country states, this time in the Division I race, and was named state athlete of the year. He took a week off before the indoor season and then went on his state record-setting tear starting with the 800 in his season-opening race Dec. 29.

Walther is hoping to attract college interest with strong performances this spring. A 4:10 1,600 is on the table, which would dip below the state record set by Kieran Tuntivate of Charter of Wilmington in 2015. Maybe by the end of his career, the 800 record will come down. Few have come close to Dover's Bruce Harris, who ran 1:49.4 in 1984.

"That would be my dream," Walther said.

'I found a good group of people'

Middletown coach Mary Kay Waltemire knew she just had to get Walsh to the starting line. Then she would be hooked.

Two years after her first cross-country race, a 5k that slowed Walsh to a walk, the senior is a running fanatic who is preparing to join Villanova's storied running program in the fall.

"I felt like I found a good group of people," Walsh said.

For a decade, Walsh led a solitary pursuit as a serious figure skater training out of The Pond Ice Rink (now The Patriot) in Newark. She loved the artistry and beauty of the sport, but just before the pandemic came to a crossroads where leveling up would have required she sacrifice a more usual existence as a high school kid.

"I just wanted to try something normal," Walsh said. "I just wanted to find groups of people. Up until that point most of my life was skating. I was always in an ice rink."

She carries with her a "coachability" from her figure skating days, but had to find distance running through a roundabout track. She played field hockey as a freshman and discovered her hand-eye coordination was lacking. "But I wasn't slow," she said.

Walsh started sprinting in the winter and made progress in the spring after forgoing plans to play lacrosse. Waltemire urged her to at least train with the team in the fall. After she toed the cross-country starting line for the first time, it wasn't long until Walsh transformed into one of the better distance runners in the state.

She's won individual events at the outdoor state meet each of the last two years and will enter her senior season with the eighth- and seventh-fastest 800 and 1,600 times outdoors in Delaware history.

"She's always been determined," Waltemire said. "And she doesn't like to lose."

Leveling up

Walsh placed fifth in the mile at last year's Penn Relays in a then PR time of 4:53.48. She called it one of her breakthrough races, having competed against and defeated several runners from other states that she follows online.

“I was geeking out a little bit," Walsh said. "I can’t believe I’m getting to run with these people."

Waltemire agreed that the connectedness of the track and field world is one in a confluence of possible reasons for the recent acceleration of the sport in Delaware. Results populate national tracking websites often within minutes or even seconds of races going final. It's not hard to know where your competition is and set goals accordingly.

The competition level is especially pronounced in the indoor track and field season. Without a suitable indoor facility in the state for invitational meets, teams compete out of state most weekends.

The Armory was long the gold standard for fast indoor facilities, but now there are also options in Staten Island and Virginia Beach. The technology that figures into their banked tracks as well as the high-level runners drawn to the meets they host offer an advantage to the current crop of Delaware harriers compared to previous generations.

There have also been advancements in shoe technology and training philosophies — it's common for top runners to maintain fitness while injured through aqua jogging or other forms of cross training. With all of those factors considered, there still has to be motivated individuals and inspired teams to continue to press the sport forward.

"Kids are resilient," Warren said. "They just find ways to do what they love and succeed... Some people still need the extra push, but there are a lot of kids out there that find ways to push themselves, find ways to motivate themselves."

It's not just that state records are falling. The sport is also close to the deepest it's ever been. N5CTA, the organizing body for cross-country and track and field in Delaware, maintains an all time performance list for each event. More than one in 10 of the performances in the top 50 in each event has occurred in the last three years.

The current decade is on pace to pass the previous decade, which accounts for more than a third of the top 50 performances.

The results are roughly equal when separated by gender. The greatest difference comes when you filter the performances by discipline.

The leaderboards in the three individual distance events — the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 — are dominated by runners who competed from 2011 to 2020. Times from that decade account for almost three-quarters of the top 5 and top 10 in each event and almost half of the top 25 and top 50.

The current decade also has a strong foothold, accounting for 13% of times in the top 50 in the distance events. Of course, you'd expect each generation to be faster than the last, but that hasn't always been the case in Delaware. The 1990s failed to outperform the 1980s and while the 2000s outdid the 90s they were replaced by the 2010s at a greater rate.

Warren graduated from Saint Mark's in 2009. Each year as coach at DMA, he gave his runners a list of his high school personal bests (and rough equivalents for girls). He told them he'd buy them Chick-fil-A if they beat any of his times.

At first, it was an occasional cause for celebration.

"Last year was insane," Warren said. "I was buying Chick-fil-A every other week.”

After Saint Mark's, Warren continued competing at the University of Delaware and post-collegiately. When Walther broke the 1,600 record, Warren told him over texts that he had broken his all-time 1,600 personal best. That, they joked, was worth a steak dinner.

Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on X and Instagram @holveck_brandon. Follow him on TikTok @bholveck.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Ethan Walther, Isabelle Walsh lead new generation of Delaware runners