# Good 800m Times by Age and Grade: Rate Your Time

> Published 2026 qualifying 800m times from California, Oregon and Missouri, a middle school standard, the college ranges, why the splits matter, and hand timing at 800.

September 16, 2026 · 8 min read

**The real numbers first.** Nobody publishes an official "average 800m time by age", and the sites that print one are guessing. What IS published: section and state qualifying standards, a youth championship standard, and college recruiting ranges. Every row below is one of those, named and linked, and nothing in it is estimated. All times FAT. The 800 is the first distance where the two hand-timing conventions part ways, and that is covered below.

**Rate your 800m time.** Type your time into the box on this page and see which college level it reaches, how far the next one is, and where it would sit on the live board. If the box is not showing, open the [800m rating tool](https://trackreels.io/rate/800m/M) for boys or the [girls version](https://trackreels.io/rate/800m/F).

| Level (boys, FAT) | 800m time | Where the number comes from |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Middle school championship level | 2:14.00 | FLYRA 2026 Florida youth state championship qualifying standard (a middle school meet, not the FHSAA high school series) |
| Varsity: advancing from league finals | 2:00.24 to 2:09.14 | CIF Southern Section 2026 minimum standards for 2nd and 3rd place at league finals, Division 1 2:00.24 to Division 4 2:09.14 |
| State-qualifier level | 1:54.80 to 2:04.48 | CIF-SS 2026 at-large standards 1:54.80 (D1) to 2:01.88 (D4); Oregon OSAA 2026 state standards 1:54.91 (6A) to 2:04.48 (2A); Missouri MSHSAA 2026 district standards 1:57.14 (Class 5) to 2:04.37 (Class 1) |
| College walk-on range | 1:54.00 to 2:05.00 | Published D3 (1:54.00 to 2:02.00) and NAIA (1:55.00 to 2:05.00) recruiting ranges |
| College scholarship range | 1:47.00 to 1:58.00 | Published D1 (1:47.00 to 1:55.00) and D2 (1:49.00 to 1:58.00) ranges |

| Level (girls, FAT) | 800m time | Where the number comes from |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Middle school championship level | 2:33.50 | FLYRA 2026 Florida youth state championship qualifying standard (a middle school meet, not the FHSAA high school series) |
| Varsity: advancing from league finals | 2:25.64 to 2:36.14 | CIF Southern Section 2026 minimum standards for 2nd and 3rd place at league finals, Division 1 2:25.64 to Division 4 2:36.14 |
| State-qualifier level | 2:14.73 to 2:30.89 | CIF-SS 2026 at-large standards 2:17.39 (D1) to 2:24.86 (D4); Oregon OSAA 2026 state standards 2:14.73 (6A) to 2:30.89 (1A); Missouri MSHSAA 2026 district standards 2:18.93 (Class 5) to 2:28.33 (Class 1) |
| College walk-on range | 2:11.00 to 2:42.00 | Published D3 (2:11.00 to 2:35.00) and NAIA (2:15.00 to 2:42.00) recruiting ranges |
| College scholarship range | 2:07.00 to 2:25.00 | Published D1 (2:07.00 to 2:15.00) and D2 (2:08.00 to 2:25.00) ranges |

By grade, the honest version: a freshman inside the varsity band is ahead of schedule, a junior at state-qualifier level is a college walk-on conversation, and the scholarship bands are the [published recruiting standards](https://trackreels.io/standards/800m/M) regardless of grade: coaches recruit the mark, not the birthday.

Sources, all 2026 and all marks as published: [CIF Southern Section minimum and at-large standards](https://cifss.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/CIF-SS-Track-Min-Track-and-At-Large-Standards_2026.pdf), [OSAA state championship qualifying standards](https://www.osaa.org/docs/btf/2026qualifyingstandards.pdf), [MSHSAA district qualifying standards](https://www.mshsaa.org/resources/Activities/TrackandField/District%20Qualifying%20Standards.pdf) (checked September 10, 2026), [FLYRA qualification standards](https://www.floridayouthrunners.com/qualification-standards.html). The CIF-SS minimum standard is the mark a 2nd or 3rd place finisher at league finals must have to advance; the at-large standard earns an entry without placing. OSAA standards are the four-year average of fourth place at state. MSHSAA publishes district qualifying standards by class. College ranges are the same published bands used on every [standards page](https://trackreels.io/standards) on this site.

**Put your 800 where coaches can find it.** A TrackReels profile is free. Post the race with the time and the timing method attached, and it ranks on the live [boys 800m leaderboard](https://trackreels.io/leaderboard/800m/M) or [girls 800m leaderboard](https://trackreels.io/leaderboard/800m/F), built for college coaches to browse by event, class year and state. [Create your profile](https://trackreels.io/signup) and post the reel today.

## Why there is no official table

To publish a real average 800m time for, say, a 15 year old boy, somebody would need results for a representative sample of 15 year old boys. That data does not exist in one place. High school results sit in fifty separate state association systems, plus a handful of commercial databases, and every one of them only records athletes who competed in a scored meet.

The kids who ran one time trial in PE and never raced again are not in there. Neither are most of the athletes at the back of a JV heat. So any "average" built from meet results is really the average of *athletes who race*, which is a much faster group than *kids of that age*. Age is also a weak predictor at exactly the ages people search for: a 15 year old can be a freshman or a sophomore, pre-growth-spurt or fully developed, and in the 800 the difference between an athlete who has raced the distance ten times and one who has raced it twice is larger than a year of age.

## The 800 is two laps, and coaches read both

A 400 is a controlled sprint. An 800 is a race you can lose in the first 200 meters by running it like a 400. The number on the results sheet is the sum of two laps, and a coach who has the splits reads them before the total: a first lap a little faster than the second is a race that was paced; a first lap far faster than the second is a race that died on the back straight.

That is why a coach would rather see your 800 on film than in an email. The race shows where you sat, when you moved, and whether the last 200 was a kick or a survival. Two athletes with the same 2:02 can be very different recruits, and the film is how they tell them apart.

The 800 is also not run in lanes past the first turn, so there is no wind reading to worry about and no lane draw to blame. What does still change the number is the surface: an indoor 800 on a 200 meter track is a slower race than the same effort outdoors, and the NCAA has ended the conversions that used to paper over that from the 2026-27 season. The [indoor versus outdoor guide](https://trackreels.io/blog/indoor-vs-outdoor-track-differences) and [the note on the ended conversions](https://trackreels.io/blog/ncaa-altitude-conversion-eliminated) cover it.

## Hand timing at 800 meters: the two rules disagree

Every standard above is fully automatic timing. If yours came off a stopwatch, the two published conversion conventions give different answers at this distance, and this is the first event where they do. The NFHS rule adds 0.24 seconds at every distance, the 800 included. The Track and Field News convention that Athletic.net seeds on rounds a hand time up to the next tenth and adds nothing at all from 800 meters up. A hand-timed 2:01.9 is a 2:02.14 under NFHS and a 2:01.90 under Athletic.net. Ask which one the meet you are comparing against uses, or run both in the [hand time to FAT converter](https://trackreels.io/convert/hand-time-to-fat) and quote the slower one.

## How to use that if you are 13, 14 or 15

You are not being measured against those numbers yet, and you should not be. Use them as a horizon instead.

**Work out the gap, not the grade.** If you are a 14 year old girl running 2:38, the nearest published band is the CIF-SS Division 4 league-finals minimum at 2:36.14, and the FLYRA middle school standard at 2:33.50 is the one after that. Those are targets measured in seconds, which is a far more useful fact than "the average 14 year old runs X".

**Track your own progression.** The strongest recruiting signal for a young half-miler is improvement over seasons, and the 800 rewards training age more than almost any other event on the track. A boy who goes 2:18, then 2:09, then 2:03 is a far more interesting recruit than one who ran 2:03 three years running. The [800m progression by age tool](https://trackreels.io/progression/800m) takes a time at 13, 14 or 15 and shows what the same age-graded level is worth at 17 and 18 on the published WMA curve, then places the age-18 time against the college standards.

**Race it with real timing before you compare anything.** A hand-timed time trial on a training day tells a coach very little. A fully automatic 800 from a scored meet, with the splits, tells them almost everything.

## What a coach actually sees

A coach opening a recruiting profile wants three things next to an 800m time: the timing method, the meet, and the race itself. A number on its own is a claim; a race with the conditions attached is evidence. That is the whole reason TrackReels exists: every reel here is posted with the event, the mark, the date and the timing method, so a coach can judge the race as well as the row.

[Create a free profile](https://trackreels.io/signup), post your 800, and see where it lands on the [boys](https://trackreels.io/leaderboard/800m/M) or [girls](https://trackreels.io/leaderboard/800m/F) board. Then check the next band on the [boys](https://trackreels.io/standards/800m/M) or [girls](https://trackreels.io/standards/800m/F) standards page, or rate any time straight away with the [800m rating tool](https://trackreels.io/rate/800m/M).

## A better question than "is this good for my age"

Ask **"what is the next band, and what does it want"**. Then you have a target rather than a verdict. You can check any mark against every division on the [standards page](https://trackreels.io/standards), or go straight to the 800m ladder for [boys](https://trackreels.io/standards/800m/M) or [girls](https://trackreels.io/standards/800m/F).

Related: [what is a good 400m time](https://trackreels.io/blog/what-is-a-good-400m-time), [which event you should actually run](https://trackreels.io/blog/which-track-event-should-you-run), [cross country recruiting standards](https://trackreels.io/blog/cross-country-recruiting-standards), and [hand time versus FAT](https://trackreels.io/blog/hand-timing-vs-fat-explained).

[More TrackReels guides](https://trackreels.io/blog) · [Create your athlete profile](https://trackreels.io/signup)

## Keep reading

[### Good Mile Times by Age and Grade: Rate Your 1600m Published 2026 qualifying 1600m and 1500m times from California, Oregon and Florida youth, the college ranges, mile versus 1600 versus 1500, and hand timing.](https://trackreels.io/blog/good-mile-times-by-age-and-grade)[### Good 200m Times by Age and Grade: Rate Your Time Published 2026 qualifying 200m times from California, Oregon and Missouri, the college recruiting ranges, the bend, the wind rule and the hand-time catch.](https://trackreels.io/blog/good-200m-times-by-age-and-grade)[### Is 11.5 a Good 100m Time? Rate Yours by Level For a girl 11.5 is inside the D1 recruiting range. For a boy it is not a recruiting mark. Hand-timed, it is really an 11.74. The full ladder, D1 to NAIA.](https://trackreels.io/blog/is-11-5-a-good-100m-time)

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