From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Winslow Township graduate Tionna Tobias joined the 20-foot club over the weekend.

Tobias, a University of Iowa sophomore leaped a PR 20-1 1/2 at the Larry Wieczorek Invitational at the Iowa Rec Center in Iowa City. That’s the No. 1 mark in the Big Ten Conference this year.

That is the No. 3 mark in Iowa history, behind Jahisha Thomas’s school record of 21-0 3/4 from 2018 and Zinnia Miller’s 20-4 1/4 in 2014. She’s Iowa’s fifth 20-footer including indoor and outdoor competition.

Her previous college best was 19-9, which she hit outdoors last May at the Billy Hayes Invitational at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Her previous indoor PR was 19-8 1/4 as a Winslow senior at 2018 Easterns at the Armory in New York. Her collegiate indoor best before this past weekend was 19-4 at the Hawkeye B1G Invitational in Ames last February. At Winslow, Tobias had an outdoor PR of 19-11 in the spring of 2018 at the state Group 3 meet at Central Regional.

With the 20-1 1/2 jump, Tobias ranks No. 17 among U.S. women on the IAAF performance list and No. 15 among collegians (including foreign collegians).

Looks like Tobias is the first 20-foot jumper from South Jersey since 2017, when Cidae’a Woods, another former Winslow athlete, hit 20-3 1/2 indoors in a Tennessee-Indiana dual meet in Bloomington, Ind., and 21-0 at the SEC Championships in Columbia, S.C., outdoors while competing for Tennessee.

Tobias only had three legal jumps in her series. She opened with a foul, then jumped 19-1 1/2 before another foul and then finished with 19-2 1/4 and 20-1 1/2 before finishing with a third foul.

But Tobias isn’t just a long jumper. She also PR’d in the 60-meter hurdles in the same meet, her 8.44 breaking her previous PR of 8.45 by 1-100th of a second. That 8.44 is tied for No. 7 in school history and No. 7 so far this winter in the Big Ten.

Tobias also has PRs of 13.59 in the 100-meter hurdles, 5-6 3/4 in the high jump and 5,083 points in the heptathlon, No. 5 in school history, and she’s scored as high as 3,625 points indoors in the pentathlon, No. 7 in Iowa history.