Through his mother's influence and a coach's persistence, Scott ran on Upland's cross country team.

Steve caught track fever watching the 1972 Olympics on television, as U.S. runner Dave Wottle won the gold medal in the 800 meters.

Wottle is often remembered for running the Olympic final in a golf cap, which he forgot to take off during the medal ceremony while the national anthem played.

[6] In his senior year, Scott became the top runner on the cross country team and improved his track times to 1:52 in the 800 and 4:15 in the mile.

He finished fourth in the CIF California State Meet in the 880 yards[7] and drew several college scholarship offers.

He still holds the UCI school record in the 1500,[8] and the UC Irvine Steve Scott Invitational is named after him.

Scott ran his first sub-4:00 mile indoors at the Sunkist Invitational in Los Angeles in January 1977, his junior year in college.

When Sebastian Coe set a mile record of 3:48.95 in Oslo on July 17, 1979, Scott finished second with a time of 3:51.11.

This included three top ten finishes in the U.S. National Cross Country Championships (7th in 1979, 4th in 1980, and 6th in 1981) as well as three victories in the Carlsbad 5000 road race from 1986 to 1988.

He traveled the world and competed year-round in the United States, Canada, Jamaica, Germany, Sweden, Norway, England, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Australia and New Zealand.

In the closing stages of a career that saw Scott race at the highest levels for nearly two decades, his attempt to run a sub-4:00 mile at age-40 in 1996 [12] was derailed by a battle with testicular cancer.