Just to put things in perspective, Leo and Lex were 2nd and 5th in the greatest HS mile field of all time, RUNNING THEIR OFF-EVENT. Big things to come once they're running in their true events. Overall, there's absolutely nothing to feel bad about, everybody had a great race.
Birnbaum was 1st and Burns was 4th, in the greastest mile field of time, RUNNING THEIR OFF-EVENT, because Birnbaum is higher up on the 2M all time list (2nd) as is Burns (3rd behind Birnbaum and Lukas V) and (2nd, formerly 1st) in the 5000m.
3:37 > 8:34
3:58 > 8:34, 13:37
PER THE WA SCORING TABLES!!! You could make the argument that the mile is Leo's strongest event, but I would say his performance at World XC's shows otherwise.
Jim Ryun and Alan Webb are obviously 1-2 all time high school milers. Birnbaum now the clear 3.
I'll get out my calculator to double check but I'm pretty sure that a 3:34.36 is ~ 3.57 faster than 3:37.93.
I'm also pretty sure that Kessler's HS 3:34.36 was faster than any NCAA athlete had ever run 1500 at the time. Birnbaum's 3:37.93 would be top 10 in this year's NCAA however, so he is really really good.
Jim Ryun ran 3:33.1 the summer at the end of his sophomore year of college in 1967 -- that's faster than Kessler.