That’s a solid jump, and you might be right about the improvement curve. Still, I think it’s hard to know until after track season. Could be the summer training has him at a different level. And a 4:20ish rising junior has a very different set of options than a current sophomore with a 4:40 PB from last spring. (Track times are really key, more so than XC).
As far as timing of reaching out to coaches, I guess there’s no real harm to doing it at this point. But it’s fairly early and probably premature for a boy in track and field. I don’t think any meaningful future opportunities will disappear by waiting, so I’d just base it on whether you think it’d be helpful at, say, St. Olaf, to connect with the (current) coach and chat about what things are like there.
Thank you! That is super helpful about track times (I guess because track is standardized across everyone?). It probably makes sense to wait then, since I suspect there will be at least a bit of a jump this season during track, particularly since he did no post-season competition during track last season because of where he was in the team rankings. He did manage two new PRs in the 1600 (4:36) and 3200 (9:50) at the end of the XC season this year without any specific training or racing those distances since early May, so I think that bodes well for the upcoming indoor and outdoor seasons.
My daughter a signed track athlete. Many schools have published recruiting standards, and when your son hits them he should reach out to the programs. Many top D3 schools will only recruit after his junior year, but if he is reaching D1 standards they will reach out earlier.