From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Turns out Isabelle Deal is more than just a terrific javelin thrower.

The Washington Township graduate, now an Ursinus senior, broke her own school record in the shot put Friday at the All-Atlantic Regional Track and Field Championships at the Armory.

Deal, a senior, placed second with a throw of 42-6 ¾ on her final attempt of the competition. She was sitting in 5th place through five rounds before her clutch final-throw bomb.

Deal broke her own school record of 42-5 ¾, which she set last month at a meet at her home facility in Collegeville.

Stockton senior Shahyan Abraham of Orange won the event with a 42-7, moving up from 7th to 1st on her fifth throw. That’s only 8 1/4 inches off the school record of 43-5 1/4 set in 2005 by Cherokee’s Jessica Caccamo.

Deal’s series started out modestly with throws of 40-2 ¼, 41-2 ½ and 41-8 ½ in the trials and then a 39-9 ¼ and 40-8 ¾ on her first two attempts in the finals.

The AARTFC Championships are a last-chance qualifier for the NCAA Division 3 Championships next weekend in Birmingham, Ala. The qualifying deadline is Saturday.

Deal has always been an elite javelin thrower, and the only similarity between the javelin and shot put is that they’re both throws.

But Deal hasn’t been content to simply throw the javelin outdoors and sit around and do nothing indoors, and she’s gradually become a very good shot putter as well.

She had high school PRs of 36-0 indoors and 37-8 outdoor and then surpassed 40 feet once her freshman year at Ursinus – she threw 40-9 at an indoor meet in Winchester, Va. – and once more her junior year – she threw 40-1 ½ outdoors last spring at Gwynedd-Mercy.

But this winter, she’s been over 40 feet in all nine meets, including her PR and school record Friday. She placed second in the shot (and sixth in the weight throw) at the Cenennial Conference Championships last weekend in Lancaster, and her weight throw PR of 45-6 ¼ is only five inches off the school record. She’s not listed among the entrants in the weight throw on Saturday.

As for the javelin, Deal has a PR of 144-10 – also the school record – from a meet last spring in Princeton and earned All-America honors for the second time with a 6th-place finish at Division 3 nationals at SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio. She placed 8th in 2021 with a 135-1 in Greensboro.