The Dragon Who Runs: Caden Leonard and the Quest to Break Four Minutes
There’s a wall inside the Southlake Carroll Athletic complex that reads, simply: Protect the Tradition. For most athletes, that’s motivational wallpaper. For Caden Leonard, it’s a creed — one he has lived, raced, and bled for across four remarkable years as a Dragon.
Now a senior, Leonard stands at the threshold of something even bigger than state championships. He is eight hundredths of a second away from becoming the third Texas high schooler in history to break the four-minute mile. And if the arc of his career says anything, it’s that he tends to get what he comes for.
Built Different, From the Beginning
Caden Leonard didn’t just discover distance running — he was born into it. His father, Justin Leonard, is the legendary head coach of the Southlake Carroll cross country and track program, a man who has now guided the Dragons to 15 of their 19 all-time state team championships. Caden grew up running to the finish line flags as a child, watching his dad build something extraordinary in suburban North Texas.
By the time he laced up as a varsity sophomore in the fall of 2023, the expectations were already enormous. He exceeded them immediately.
As a sophomore, Leonard became Carroll’s first-ever individual cross country state champion, helping lead the Dragons to the team title and earning the Gatorade Texas Boys Cross Country Player of the Year award. Experts at PrepCalTrack called him “like a surgeon on the cross country course — his tactics and technique carry the utmost precision.”
That was just the opening act.
The State Title Collection
What Caden Leonard has accumulated in UIL 6A competition is, in a word, staggering.
Cross Country: Three consecutive individual state titles — as a sophomore (2023), junior (2024), and senior (2025) — making him the first male runner in Texas history to win three individual titles at the state’s largest classification. No one at the 5A or 6A level had done it before him. His winning times tell the story of an athlete who keeps getting better: from 14:52 as a sophomore, to 14:50.1 as a junior, to 14:42 this past November as a senior. Each year, a sharper, more decisive performance.
Track & Field: Leonard’s track dominance began in earnest in the spring of 2024, when he won the UIL 6A 1,600-meter state championship as a sophomore with a 4:09.39. He came tantalizingly close to a double that day, finishing second in the 3,200 meters — just two seconds behind the state champion — a near-miss that clearly left something unfinished.
He came back in 2025 to settle the score. At the 2025 UIL Class 6A State Championships in Austin, Leonard did something that may never have been done before at the 6A level: winning two state titles in a single day. He took gold in the 3,200 meters with an 8:57.98, closing his final lap in a blistering 56.32 seconds, and then returned that evening to defend his 1,600-meter title, crossing in 4:10.18.
Combined with his cross country individual title earlier that school year, Leonard completed the Texas distance “Triple Crown” — cross country, 1600, and 3200 — a rare feat achieved by only a handful of athletes in Texas high school history.
In total, Caden Leonard holds six individual UIL 6A state titles going into the spring of his senior year, with more opportunities ahead.
A Dynasty Elevated
Individual greatness is remarkable. What Leonard has contributed to the Carroll program as a whole is something else entirely.
The Dragons’ boys cross country team just won its seventh consecutive UIL 6A state championship this past November — the longest streak in the history of the state’s largest classification and the second-longest in all of Texas history. Leonard has been a foundational piece in four of those seven titles.
“Every year brings new challenges, fresh competition, and rising expectations — yet this group met them head-on,” coach Justin Leonard said after the 2025 championship. “Capturing a seventh state title in a row reflects not just talent, but a culture built on hard work, teamwork, and belief.”
For Caden, it’s always been about more than his own accolades. “We have a big thing on our wall — it says protect the tradition,” he said after his 3,200 win at the 2025 state track meet. “And we live by that every day. We chase that. And we keep getting better. That’s the biggest thing — doing it for others. Doing it for your teammates.”
The National Stage
Texas can’t contain him. Leonard has spent the past two years proving himself against the best high school runners in the country — and increasingly, the best post-collegiate runners as well.
His NXN career is a story of relentless improvement over four years. He finished 135th as a freshman — running through illness and injury, with a bootleg cast on a broken arm — then climbed to 21st as a sophomore, third as a junior, and second as a senior at the 2025 championship in December. That’s one of the great individual progression arcs in the history of the meet. He also finished third at the Brooks XC Championships in San Diego against a field of elite college commits from programs like Oregon, Florida, and Utah. He was named the Gatorade Texas Boys Cross Country Player of the Year for the second consecutive year following that performance.
Over the summer of 2025, he placed second at the Brooks PR Invitational in Washington state in the two-mile, running 8:50.22 — part of a historic top-six finish where every runner set a new American high school best for the event. Only the winner, Nebraska’s Juan Gonzalez (heading to Oregon), separated him from first by a scant three seconds.
Then came the recognition to match: Nike named Leonard one of its Elite Runners for 2025-2026, placing him among just 20 male high school athletes in the country selected across all track and field disciplines.
Eight Hundredths of a Second
And now, the moment that has all of high school running holding its breath.
On a fast, banked 200-meter track at JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at the ASICS Sound Running Invite, Caden Leonard lined up against a field that included seasoned post-collegiate professionals. He ran with them. He finished with them. And when the clock stopped, it read 4:00.07.
Eight hundredths of a second. That’s the margin between Leonard and one of the most iconic barriers in all of sports.
He was the top high school finisher in a professional-caliber field. Shane Streich won in 3:58.55, Clay Pender followed in 3:59.67, and Leonard was right there — third overall, competing with men who have been running professionally for years.
Only two Texas high school athletes have ever broken four minutes in the mile: Reed Brown — himself a Carroll alum, UIL state champion, and NCAA All-American at Oregon — and Sam Worley. Brown ran 3:59.30 back in 2017, a mark that still stands as the Carroll school record. Leonard is knocking on that door.
Nike Indoor Nationals looms on the horizon, where Leonard is expected to anchor the Texas distance medley relay. Another shot at history may come before his high school career is finished. Given his trajectory, the progression feels almost inevitable. The question isn’t whether he has the fitness. The question is whether the race sets up right, the pacing holds through 1,200 meters, and those final 400 meters carry him home.
What Comes Next
After his senior season concludes, Caden Leonard will head to the University of North Carolina to continue his running career. It’s a program that has built a strong distance culture, and Leonard arrives as one of the most decorated high school runners in recent Texas — and national — history.
But right now, there’s still business left in Southlake.
Another spring season awaits. More races on the Mike A. Myers Stadium oval in Austin. And somewhere on a fast track, in a field that sets the right pace, a clock that might finally tick past that finish line reading 3:59-point-something.
The kid who grew up carrying finish line flags is now the one breaking through them. The wall says protect the tradition. Caden Leonard has done that — and then some.
The four-minute mile is next.
Caden Leonard will compete for the University of North Carolina beginning in fall 2026.