Jay Sears is a Houston-based entrepreneur and philanthropist who serves as managing partner of NewQuest, the commercial real estate firm he helped build into the largest privately held shopping center developer in Texas, with more than $4.5 billion in completed retail and shopping center projects. He first entered commercial real estate in 1996 when he founded Sears Realty Company, which later merged with Quest Properties to form NewQuest and expand the business beyond Texas. A Baylor University graduate, Jay Sears sits on the board of the West Houston Association and holds membership in the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Urban Land Institute, and the Rice Design Alliance. He is also an active philanthropist, supporting organizations such as Houston Children’s Charity and his own Always Do Good Fund scholarship program, interests connected to the athletic-performance topic explored below.
Masters track and field gives adults opportunities to compete in running, jumping, and throwing events. In the United States, competitors generally enter five-year age divisions, such as 40–44 or 60–64. Race times, heights, and distances decide results within those groups, but they do not readily show how performances by athletes of different ages compare.
For comparisons across ages, Masters athletics uses age grading. This system evaluates a performance against standards that account for the competitor’s age. It can produce either an adjusted time or distance, representing an equivalent performance at a younger age, or a percentage expressing how the result compares with an age-specific benchmark.
These comparisons serve a different purpose from ordinary competition standings. Someone who finishes first in a 60–64 age division wins that division regardless of how athletes in their forties perform. Age grading offers another way to assess those performances without changing the finishing order.
The calculation begins with the athlete’s age, the relevant men’s or women’s category, the event, and the recorded result. Races are measured in time, while jumps and throws use height or distance. Each event requires its own reference values because performances change with age differently across disciplines.
Age-grading tables draw on recorded results from athletes across a range of ages and track and field events. The tables contain age factors and age standards derived from patterns in those results. As additional performances become available, the tables can be revised to reflect changes in the standards rather than preserve outdated benchmarks.
Two related calculations produce different outputs. Multiplying a recorded performance by the appropriate age factor gives an equivalent open-age performance, such as an adjusted sprint time.
For a percentage, running events divide the age-specific standard by actual time, while jumps and throws divide the actual height or distance by their standard. Multiplying that ratio by 100 yields the score.
A higher percentage indicates a stronger performance relative to the reference standard for that age and event. A score of 90 percent or higher falls in the world-class range, while 80 percent marks the national-class threshold. These labels describe relative performance against the standards, not an athlete’s finishing place.
The difference is visible in results from the 2025 USATF Masters Outdoor Championships. Jennifer St. Jean won the women’s 50–54 800 meters in 2:32.62, earning an age-graded score of 84.75 percent.
Judy Stobbe won the women’s 60–64 division in 2:38.62, a slower time that received a higher score of 89.35 percent. At some Masters competitions, organizers publish age-graded scores separately from regular results, which show how athletes placed in their age divisions.
Some events also use the scores to recognize performances across ages. Other awards continue to follow ordinary age-group placements, so an age-graded ranking should not be mistaken for an official finishing order.
Age grading has limits. Its scores depend on the chosen edition of the tables, the event specifications, and correctly recorded performances.
Comparisons between very different disciplines can also be less informative than comparisons within similar events; a percentage alone cannot establish which competitor is more capable in every respect.
The same percentages can help an athlete assess performances over several seasons. A runner might record a slower time at an older age while maintaining, or even improving, an age-graded percentage.
Comparing results under consistent standards offers a way to examine age-relative progress without treating every change in raw time as a decline.
About Jay Sears
Jay Sears is a Houston-based entrepreneur and philanthropist who serves as managing partner of NewQuest, a commercial real estate firm he helped grow into the largest privately held shopping center developer in Texas. A Baylor University graduate, he holds memberships with the West Houston Association, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Urban Land Institute, and the Rice Design Alliance. He supports numerous philanthropic causes, including Houston Children’s Charity and his own Always Do Good Fund scholarship program, and received an Emmy Award for the documentary Athlete A.