Rowan sophomore Nick Neville posted the No. 2 800 time this year in NCAA Division 3 when he ran 1:54.32 Saturday at the Great Dane Classic at the Ocean Breeze Complex in Staten Island, N.Y.
The only faster time in the nation according to the Direct Athletics database was turned in the same day by Jack Pinho of Springfield (Mass.) College, who ran 1:54.22 in a meet at Tufts University in Boston.
It looks like Neville’s previous indoor PR was a 1:58.04 at the 2016 Gotham Cup meet on the same track.
Neville placed third behind post-collegiate Wesley Vasquez, who ran 1:49.15, and UMBC’s Ifa Eado, who was second in 1:54.17.
Neville ran 1:53-point three times last spring, including an outdoor PR of 1:53.02 at the Hopkins Invitational in Baltimore. He was second to five-time All-America Jeremy Hernandez of Ramapo in the NJAC meet on Rowan’s home track in Glassboro with a 1:53.91 behind Hernandez’s 1:51.87.
Neville’s 1:54.32 puts him less than a second off Rowan’s indoor school record of 1:53.57, set back in 1981 for Glassboro State by Tavo Rivera, who won the 1977 Meet of Champions in the 880-yard run for Pemberton.
Neville ran high school track at South Brunswick and was fourth in the 2015 Meet of Champions with a 1:54.21 and also ran on South Brunswick’s fifth-place 3,200-meter relay team, which went 7:53.39 at the M-fo-C.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 