Surrounded by hundreds of Kodiak track and field faithful, Trevor Dunbar reinforced his status as one of the nation's best high school distance runners by running a smoking-fast 3,200 meters Friday.

Dunbar capped the final home meet of his career with a time of 8 minutes, 51.5 seconds, the season's fastest time in the nation by four seconds, according to dyestat.com, an Internet site for high school track and field. The previous best was an 8:55.19 by California's Erik Olson.

The achievement isn't a state record, because those can only be set at the state championships. But it's faster than Don Clary's vaunted 1975 state record in the two-mile run (9:04.4 at a distance of 3,219 meters).

Breaking the coveted 9:00 mark was so special, an estimated 400 people who came to watch the Kodiak Tri- Invitational spilled onto the track to congratulate their star athlete.

"People here will remember this for a long time," said Marcus Dunbar, Trevor's father and Kodiak's track coach. "But for Trevor, he'll just move on to another goal."

Next up for his 18-year-old son is the state track and field championships on May 22-23 in Fairbanks. Palmer's Jake Parisien set the 3,200 state record last year in 9:11.27. Dunbar's time Friday was almost 20 seconds faster.

Dunbar, who was unavailable for comment because he was at a school dance, said last month at a track meet in Anchorage that his goal was to break 9:00.

In November of 2008, he and some teammates cleared Kodiak's track of snow and ice and he ran a 9:01 time trial. A teammate videotaped it and the clip wound up on several Internet sites, including YouTube, becoming an online hit among runners.

By then, Dunbar had already gained national attention as a cross-country runner. He posted times of 14:47.7 at five kilometers (3.1 miles) and 14:41 at three miles, both of which led the nation for at least part of the season. At the Foot Locker national championships, he finished second.

Friday afternoon's ground-breaking performance is sure to draw comparisons to Clary's two-mile record, which hasn't been threatened in the 34 years since he set it.

"His record seemed untouchable for all these years," Marcus Dunbar said. "Now someone can say Trevor beat his mark."

When Trevor clocked a 4:25 for the first four laps, Marcus said he had a hunch that if his son maintained that pace things could get interesting. After each lap, Marcus yelled out his son's splits to the crowd.

When Trevor crossed the finish line -- 49 seconds ahead of anyone else -- Marcus no longer needed to yell.

"They knew," he said. "They just knew."