From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Timber Creek junior Timothy Whitaker turned in an early sub-50 for 400 meters Tuesday as part of a sprint triple in a dual meet at Timber Creek.

Whitaker won the 400 in 49.93 and also won the 100 in 11.04 and the 200 in 22.25. Whitaker, who ran 2:02.37 in December at the Ott Center, has legit range from 100 meters to the 800.

The 100 was the first Whitaker has ever run in high school, so that’s one PR. His previous 200 PR was an indoor 22.54 at the Ott Center in February, and his previous 400 PR was a 50.14 at the Ott in January. His outdoor 400 best was a 51.47 this past May at Haddon Township.

So one day into the 2026 outdoor season, Whitaker already has three PRs.

Sizzling start to the season for Washington Township sophomore Nia’Leila Cuascut, who tripled the sprints with three fast times Wednesday in a FAT-timed dual meet at Timber Creek.

Cuascut won the 100 in 12.11, the 200 in 25.31 and the 400 in 61.56. All three are faster than the fastest listed times in New Jersey so far this spring in the MileSplit database, so pending what happens in other meets on Tuesday she’s going to be among the state leaders in three events.

The 100 time is a PR for Cuascut, who ran 12.18 when she placed 12th at the Meet of Champions at Pennsauken in June.

She smashed her 200 PR of 25.71 from South Jersey Group 4 Sectionals last spring at Pennsauken, and she was just off her 400 PR of 59.75, which she ran twice last year.

In the 100, Cuascut wasn’t far off the school record of 12.02 set by Dylan Giloley at 2024 South Jersey Group 4 Sectionals, also at Pennsauken. She’s only 1-100th of a second outside the all-time Gloucester County top-10, which goes down to Jackie Dim of Washington Township in 2007 and Iyanla Kollock of Our Lady of Mercy in 2016, who both ran 12.10.

Egg Harbor junior Xavier Aucule opened the outdoor season with the fastest 400-meter hurdles time by an Egg Harbor athlete in 18 years.

In a dual meet at Atlantic City, Aucule ran 55.67, snapping his PR of 56.00 from his 4th-place finish at South Jersey Group 4 Sectionals last May at Pennsauken.

That’s fastest by an EHT hurdler since Stevenson Cajuste ran 54.94 at the 2008 Penn Relays, back before Penn sadly eliminated the high school 400-meter intermediates.

School record holder is Charles Oglesby, who ran 54.81 at the 1997 state Group 4 meet at South Plainfield.

Aucule is coming off an indoor season that saw him run 50.13 in the flat 400 at the Ott Center and place 4th at Sectionals at the Bubble.

His time is fastest in New Jersey in the early going this outdoor season. Kasey Kinley of Hunterdon Central ran 56.74 this past weekend in a meet in Somerset.

Bucknell junior Shaelan McNally from Paul VI and sophomore Kerry O’Day from Cherokee both ran collegiate PRs Sunday in the Bison’s dual meet vs. Binghamton in Lewisburg.

McNally won the 800 in 2:14.08 and O’Day was 4th in the 1,500 in 4:38.36.

McNally had only run one previous collegiate 800 and that was at an indoor meet in January 2025 in a home meet, where she ran 2:22.98. She ran 2:11.85 as a Paul VI senior in an indoor meet at Ocean Breeze.

O’Day’s 4:38.36 was her first collegiate 1,500. She ran 4:43.29 at Cherokee in May 2024 at Icahn Stadium in New York.

These were outdoor season openers for both McNally and O’Day.

Bucknell junior John Flammer from Holy Spirit ran 1:58.32 and placed 7th in the men’s 800.

Bryce Tucker opened his 2026 outdoor season with an impressive 400-meter hurdles win in Orlando.

Tucker, a Rutgers junior from Pennsauken, ran 50.77 to win the intermediates at the Central Florida Knights Invitational.

He won by four meters over Canadian Ryder King of Cornell, who was 2nd in 51.26.

Tucker’s 50.77 is 4th-fastest so far in the Big Ten Conference and 16th-fastest in NCAA Division 1.

Tucker ran a lifetime-best 50.00 last May at the NCAA East First Round in Jacksonville, earning a lane at the NCAA Championships, where he advanced to the final and earned All-America honors with an 8th-place finish.

That’s 4th-fastest ever by a South Jersey athlete, behind only Reuben McCoy of Winslow [48.37], Paulsboro’s Fred Sharpe [48.86] and Camden’s Dwight Ruff [48.50]. It’s also 2nd-fastest in Rutgers history behind the school-record 49.82 set by Jameson Woodell of Hunterdon Central at the 2022 East Prelims in Bloomington, Ind.

In the same race in Orlando, Deptford’s Lathan Brown, a Rutgers junior, placed 6th with a 52.91.

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 Nick 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.