Mile City: A Weekend at the Dempsey
On Friday afternoon, I boarded a bus to Seattle’s International District, caught a train to the UW campus, and walked the final stretch to Dempsey Indoor.
Why public transit when I have a car? If you’ve driven on I-5 on a Friday, you know. Last year, leaving UW on a Friday night left me gridlocked and miserable. This time, I opted for less stress and more focus.
Friday’s schedule was a gauntlet: 800m, 3000m, and 5000m races. I was on assignment for DyeStat, which meant a strict workflow: stay focused, capture the winner, import, edit, and email the image the second the race concluded. It’s a high-pressure environment, but I enjoyed training my lens on athletes I wasn’t familiar with.
The Dempsey is its own ecosystem, a sensory loop where sound wraps around you from every angle. Noise bounces off the high roof and the walls, making it nearly impossible to lock onto a single conversation—until a snippet cuts through. You catch phrases like "you just broke our school record" or "you made the all-time top 10 list," milestones that vanish into the din unless you’re embedded in that specific team’s world. Visually, it’s just as tricky. The lighting looks pristine when you first walk in, but through the lens, you quickly find the traps: pockets of darkness and uneven spots that cast weird shadows across the athletes. It becomes a game of inches—a mere three-foot shift to the left plunged my subject into shadow, forcing a frantic dance of dials and buttons to keep the athlete’s effort from being lost to the dark.
Scanning the field revealed familiar faces in new colors. Emma Schmutz is running for Pacific now, but it feels like yesterday I was photographing her in a South Kitsap uniform. I caught Julia Couch, now at Oregon State, running the 800m on Friday and doubling back for the mile on Saturday.
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During some downtime, I tried to sneak over to the women’s triple jump. As I approached the barricade near the landing zone, I saw media students from Fresno State sitting on the sidelines. They told me an official had run them off. I decided to try my luck, set up a clean angle, and fired off two test shots before the same official shut me down. "The coach said so," was the only explanation I got.
I’m not one to fight an official, so I retreated to the track. There is a strange irony in being permitted to sit inches from the blur of sub-four-minute miles while being cordoned off from the static, measured precision of the triple jump pit. It is beyond me how I can be safe there, but a liability at the jump. Life goes on.
Despite the hurdles, I walked away with some standout frames. Erin Vringer (Utah) and Chase Lehr (North Texas) were the highlights. Both photos took off on social media after DyeStat posted them; eventually, Keenan Gray sent the files over to the University of Utah for their own page. The shot of Chance Lehr is one of my favorites of the weekend: he somehow spotted me just past the finish line, looking dead at me, tongue out, celebrating an incredible time.
Saturday: Mile City
Saturday shifted the rhythm from a controlled sprint to a marathon of endurance, testing my focus rather than my speed. I was shooting for WestcoastXC, which meant a more relaxed affair with no strict guidelines. I spent the morning experimenting with a wide-angle lens, hunting for panning shots. I’ve been waiting to practice this technique—with athletes zipping by for multiple laps, I could dedicate two or three laps just to dialing in the shutter speed. My hit rate improved throughout the day, though the real verdict will come in the editing room.
I arrived at 8:30 AM, geared up, and ran into Emily Haas. She asked for stickers (I didn’t have any) and mentioned she followed me on Instagram. I recognized the name immediately—her sister, Lillian Haas, was racing in the second heat. It was a pleasure to meet their parents; sharing a laugh with them about the chaos of the heat sheets reminded me that behind every frame is a family waiting to see their child’s hard work immortalized.
Saturday was a rapid-fire assault of 1-mile races: high schoolers, NCAA standouts, pros, and even some middle schoolers in the seeded heats. My main goal was capturing the high schoolers; racing at the Dempsey is a massive deal for them and watching them outpace college athletes is always electric.
The ambient noise sharpened into a unified roar, the rhythmic thwack-thwack of spikes hitting the track accelerating in time with the crowd’s rising volume. There is a lot to say about a 48-hour stretch where thousands of runners claim new indoor PRs, but a few things stuck in my notebook at the end of the weekend:
The Sub-4 Standard
The men’s mile redefined depth. Across two heats, 22 runners broke the four-minute barrier. Heat 2 was particularly ruthless: every single finisher dipped under the mark. Samuel Prakel (Adidas) led the charge with a meet-best 3:51.86, but the University of Washington stole the show for depth, placing seven athletes under 4:00 in that heat alone, capped by Josiah Tostenson (3:59.41).
Even Ronan McMahon-Staggs, running unattached in Heat 1, dropped a 3:55.84—a time that would have placed him 7th in the faster heat, ahead of several pros. The margins were razor-thin; in Heat 2, Washington's Reuben Reina Jr. finished just a tenth of a second behind Nike’s Thomas Ratcliffe. When you have 21st and 22nd place finishers still cracking the sub-4 barrier, you know the track is fast.
Yosuke Shibata
I talked about Shibata (South Eugene) after NXN, and his 2025 XC season was one to be proud of. He excelled throughout the fall, closing things out with a respectable finish at Nationals. This sophomore is firmly on my radar for the coming outdoor season; after dropping a 4:09.06 mile here, he has solidified himself as an athlete I will be watching closely for the next couple of years. He has the trajectory to become something special.
Quenton Lanese
The freshman from Olympia High School doesn’t miss. Lanese ran with a visible defiance, his shoulders squared and his gaze fixed forward as he surged past seasoned runners to seize the lead. He held on to finish second in his seeded heat with a 4:13.95. To see that kind of confidence from a freshman is rare.
Cassidy Armstrong
Cassidy (Ballard) missed the outdoor season last year, so it was great to see her back on the track. She stormed onto the scene at the very end of the XC season, riding that wave all the way to NXN. She finished 8th in her seeded heat with a 4:55.29. I had the pleasure of chatting with her and her dad on Friday evening; seeing good people run fast times is always a win.
The University of Washington successfully orchestrated a massive two-day event, managing the "sea of chaos" and the constant flow of fans with remarkable precision. This logistical triumph provided the perfect stage for an extraordinary display of speed, where 22 recorded finishers broke the prestigious four-minute mile barrier,.
The depth of talent on display was staggering, from Samuel Prakel’s meet-leading 3:51.86 to the University of Washington’s own dominance, placing seven of those sub-4:00 runners, led by Reuben Reina Jr’s 3:52.37,. It was a weekend where the organization of the event perfectly matched the elite caliber of the athletes. A huge thank you to DyeStat and WestcoastXC for having me along for the ride.
