From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Rider’s Maddie Dischert from Atlantic City PR’d at 1,500 meters Saturday as part of an 800-1,500 double at a home meet in Lawrenceville.

Dischert ran 2:21.85 in a rare 800 and 4:37.13 in the 1,500, placing 2nd in both at the Rider 6-Way Invitational. It was her first collegiate 800 and first overall 800 since the 2022 indoor season, when she ran 2:44.07 as a high school junior at the Bubble.

This was also her first official college 1,500, although she did run 4:58.17 in a mile at the Armory last month.

The 4:37.13 is less than half a second off the Rider all-time top-10, which goes down to 4:36.82. Indoors, Dischert is 3rd-fastest in school history in the 5,000 at 16:59.86 at Boston University and 5th in the 3,000 with 9:53.09 at the Armory as well as 8th with that 4:58.17 mile. None of those marks are listed yet on Rider’s out-dated all-time performance lists.

Let’s play catch-up with Ocean City’s Rich Scarangelli, who is enjoying quite a career at aviation and aerospace college Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Scarangelli won his outdoor opener, a 5,000 Saturday at the Central Florida Knights Invitational in Orlando, where he ran 14:34.09 unpreassed and won by 150 meters. Despite running solo, he ran the 3rd-fastest time so far this year in the Peach Belt Conference.

The previous weekend, he ran a lifetime-best 3:49.43 for 1,500 meters at another meet on the same track, and that’s 4th-fastest this year in the conference.

At the indoor Peach Belt Conference meet in Gainesville, Scarangelli won the 3,000 in 8:10.56 and placed 2nd in the mile in 4:11.25 and also ran on the winning distance medley team, which ran 10:09.90. The results don’t say which leg he ran, but I’m guessing based on the splits he led off and split 3:0354 for 1,200 meters.

At a meet in January in Gainesville, Scarangelli ran a big eight-second mile PR of 4:08.02. That’s from a guy who didn’t break 4:20 for 1,600 meters in high school.

Scarangelli’s 5,000 PR is 14:25.28 from a race he won in January in Gainesville.

Noah Sanders, an Ursinus sophomore from Camden Catholic, has the No. 1 hammer throw in the Centennial Conference so far this year, thanks to a series of PRs this past weekend in Chester, Pa.

Sanders threw 174-2 at the Danny Curran Invitational, surpassing his previous PR of 165-7 from his 3rd-place finish at last year’s conference meet at Collegeville, Pa., where he placed 3rd.

On Saturday, he had a strong series with a 161-10 followed by a PR 168-5, a PR 171-2, a 170-6 and then the 174-2 on his final attempt. So he recorded the four-best throws of his life in one meet.

Sanders is still relatively new to the hammer. This was only his 6th all-time competition. His first was just a year ago at the same meet.

His throw is No. 21 in NCAA Division 3 so far this year.

No all-time top-10 on Ursinus’s web site, but the school record is 182-8 by Isaiah Battle of Long Branch at a meet in Grantham, Pa., in April 2023, so Sanders is only about 8 ½ feet off that mark. Battle went on to throw 201-7 after transferring to Monmouth.

Sanders also threw a discus PR of 136-0 Saturday in Chester. He PR’d in the shot at 44-4 ¼ three weeks ago at the Centennial Conference indoor championships in Lancaster. He also won his 1st conference title at that meet, throwing a PR 61-2 ¼ in the weight throw.

Jaidah Garrett is off to a fast start to her freshman year at UConn, with a triple jump PR and near-PR in the long jump in her first outdoor meet.

Garrett, from Absegami, jumped 19-3 ½ and 39-7 ¼ in the Huskies’ season opener in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Indoors, she jumped 19-5 ½ in a meet in Cambridge, Mass., and only triple jumped twice, with a season best of 37-2 ¼ at the Big East Championships in Chicago. She placed 4th in the long jump [19-3 ½] and 7th in the triple at the conference meet as a freshman.

In high school, Garrett had PRs of 19-7 ¾ at West Philly Nationals at Franklin Field this past June with a legal 0.6 meters-per-second wind. Her high school triple jump PR was 38-6 at Delsea in May. No wind guage for that meet. Her three-best high school marks were made in meets without a wind guage. Her best wind-legal triple at Absegami was a 37-9 ½ at the state Group 3 meet at Delsea with a 1.8 wind reading.

So her 39-7 ¼ in Myrtle Beach was officially a nearly two-foot PR. The wind was 1.1 on that jump and minus-1.6 on her 19-3 ½.

Garrett is now 4th-best in the Big East in the triple jump this year and 3rd in the long jump. The 39-7 ¼ is 10th-best on the all-time South Jersey alumni list and No. 2 among Abegami graduates. Mariah Hubbard of Monmouth, a four-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion, jumped 40-5 at the 2019 ECAC Championships at Boston University.

Unfortunately, UConn is one of the few Division 1 schools that doesn’t have an all-time top-10 performance list on its web site. That’s lame, UConn, get your act together!

Rider sophomore Cortland Webb from Highland won his season-opening race Saturday, running 55.30 in the 400-meter intermediates at the Rider Six-Way Invitational in Lawrenceville.

Webb won by nearly a second over Simon Advento of Marist University in Poughkeepsie, who ran 56.28.

It was Webb’s first race over hurdles since he placed 5^th in last year’s Metro Atlantic Conference meet on the same track at Rider this past May.

Webb PR’d with a 54.50 in the prelims of the conference meet.

Webb is currently No. 2 in the MAC behind Thomas Bonsignore of Manhattan, who ran 55.15 last weekend in a meet in Coral Gables, Fla.

Next for Rider is the Sam Howell Invitational Saturday at Princeton’s Weaver Stadium.

Ryan Merlino moved up to No. 8 in Rutgers history Saturday with a lifetime-best 16-8 ¼ clearance at the Central Florida Knights Invitational in Orlando.

Merlino, an Oakcrest graduate, cleared 16-8 ¼ on his 2^nd attempt and placed 2^nd to All-America teammate Brian Sullivan from Hillsborough, who cleared 18-1.

Merlino’s previous outdoor PR was 16-4 ¾ at the South Florida Invite in Tampa earlier this month. His lifetime best was 16-8 indoors at the Big Ten Championships in Indianapolis in February.

On Saturday, Merlino passed through 15-5 and then cleared 16-2 ½ on his 1^st attempt and 16-8 ¼ on his 2^nd. He took three attempts at a new PR of 17-0 ¼.

Rutgers’ other South Jersey pole vaulter, Cherry Hill East’s Noah Kreisman, has a PR of 17-3 ½ but hasn’t competed since late January at the Ott Center.

In his first outdoor college race, Tennesseee freshman Alexander Osayemi ripped an intermediate hurdles PR Saturday in Starkville, Miss.

Osayemi’s PR coming into the meet was a 52.70 from this past June at the Meet of Champions at Pennsauken as part of a wild triple that saw him win the 400 in a meet-record 46.08, place 3^rd in the 200 in 21.43 and take 2^nd in the 400 hurdles.

On Saturday, at the Alumni Bulldog Relays at Mississippi State, he ran 52.63 and placed 3^rd in the Vols’ season opener.

That makes him 7^th-fastest in the SEC so far this spring and 3^rd-fastest freshman. He’s also now 10^th-fastest freshman in NCAA Division 1. He was No. 13 freshman in D-1 indoors with his 46.80 for 400 meters. Osayemi also earned All-America honors for his relay work on Tennessee’s 4-by-4 at the NCAA Championships in Fayetteville.

His time is No. 26 among U.S. men so far this year. If he’s eligible for Under-20 Nationals – which means he’d have to turn 20 after New Year’s Eve – he’s No. 2 on the U.S. Under-20 list. World Athletics does not list a birthday for him.

Ajani Dwyer ran the fastest all-conditions 100-meter dash in the world this year at the Central Florida Knights Invitational in Orlando.

Dwyer, a Penn State sophomore from Washington Township, ran 9.96 but with a wind reading of 2.2 meters per second, just above the 2.0 limit for performances to be eligible for records and all-time lists.

According to the wind correction calculator, that equals a 10.10 with no wind or a 9.96 with the maximum allowable 2.0.

The fastest 100 in the world this year under any wind conditions is the 10.00 that Australian teenager Gout Gout ran at the Queensland Sport and Athletics Center in Nathan, Brisbane, on Feb. 21.

There were no semifinals, so Dwyer only had the one chance to race the 100 Saturday in Orlando. He didn’t run the 200.

Dwyer’s legal PR is a 10.16 with a 0.5 wind reading from last year’s Big Ten Championships in Eugene this past May. He’s run a legal 20.51 twice, one indoors and once with a 0.8.

The 9.96 is fastest by any New Jersey sprinter since eight-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis ran 9.86 at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo with a legal 1.2 wind.

Penn State’s school record is 10.15 by Ramapo transfer and Olympian Cheickna Traore at the NCAA first round qualifier in Lexington, Ky., in May 2024. Dwyer’s 9.96 is not eligible for school record purposes.

But the NCAA does not differentiate between wind-legal and wind-aided times, and Dwyer’s time obviously is fastest in college track this year.

Dwyer ran 10.32 at Washington Township, PR’ing at West Philly Nationals

Huge intermediate hurdles PR for Timber Creek graduate Nasir Ali Saturday at the Raleigh Relays.

In his first outdoor race for Chicago State after spending last year at Long Island University, Ali ran 53.39, lowering his PR nearly a full second.

Ali’s best time in his one year at LIU was 54.23 in a meet last April in Storrs, Conn. He placed 2^nd in the Northeast Conference Championships in Easton, Mass., with a 54.71.

Ali resurfaced this indoor season at Chicago State and ran 49.17 indoors in a meet in Chicago. This was his first outdoor race competing for the Cougars.

There’s no all-time performance list on the Chicago State web site – come, Chicago State sports information people, get on the ball. They do list  a school record of 52.52 in the 400 hurdles set last year by Raymond Oriakhi, although TFRRS shows his fastest time as 52.73 with no sign of a 52.52. Oriakhi is now at Pitt.

At Timber Creek, Ali had a 400IH best of 55.09 from 2024 Group 3 Sectionals at Delsea and a 400 best of 48.96, also in a meet at Delsea.

Aliya Garozzo ran the fastest 400-meter hurdles race ever by a South Jersey woman Saturday at the Raleigh Relays on Paul Derr Track on the North Carolina State campus.

Garozzo, a Paul VI graduate who competed for Penn and then Duke, won the 400 hurdles in 55.69, smashing her PR of 55.77, which she ran last April at Duke in nearby Durham.

Her time is No. 2 in the world this year, behind only four-time Australian champion Sarah Carli, who ran 55.36 in Perth last month.

The only faster woman from New Jersey over the 400-meter hurdles is world record holder and four-time Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin, who ran 50.37 in Paris when she won the 2024 Olympic gold medal.

Garozzo gave an indication of her fitness level when she PRd at 400 meters in February indoors at Clemson with a 52.43. That made her 26^th-fastest American woman this past indoor season.

Garozzo broke the meet record of 57.05 set in 1995 by Rebecca Russell, running unattatched, and broke the facility record of 55.75 set in 2021 by Andrenette Knight of Virginia. Braelyn Baker, Garozzo’s former Duke teammate, was 2^nd with a personal-best 55.77. Baker and Garozzo both ran on Duke’s 4-by-4 team that placed 5^th at NCAAs last June at Hayward Field.

All-Time South Jersey 400-Meter Hurdles Top-10
55.69 … Aliya Garozzo [Paul VI], March 28, 2026, Raleigh, N.C.
55.78 … Tonya Lee [Rancocas Valley], April 21, 1996, Walnut, Calif.

55.99 … Natalie Dumas [Eastern], June 20, Philadelphia
56.11 … Arianna Smith [Pennsville], May 17, 2025, Norfolk, Va.
56.21 … Krystal Cantey [Winslow Twp.], May 26, 2007, Gainesville, Fla.
56.87 … Evann Thompson [Lenape], May 30, 2014, Jacksonville, Fla.
57.16 … Jewel Ash [Eastern], May 9, 2022, High Point, N.C.
57.31 … Danielle Myricks [Willingboro], May 19, 2002, Columbia, Mo.

57.31 … Eusheka Bartley [Highland], May 29, 1996, Atlanta
58.28 … Nylah Perry [Winslow], May 27, 2023, Sacramento, Calif.