Lumberton’s Greg Foster, a Princeton freshman, and Cherry Hill East’s Maya Drayton, a junior at Georgetown, will represent South Jersey this weekend at the NCAA Division 1 Championships at the Albuquerque Convention Cente in New Mexico.
Foster is the only freshman who made the field of 16 long jumpers. He’s the No. 11 seed with his PR of 25-10 ¾ that he hit at the Wesley A. Brown Invitational in January in Annapolis.
Foster is undefeated in the long jump this year and hasn’t lost a long jump competition since May of 2021, when he placed 2nd in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League Championships at the Peddie School in Hightstown, where he jumped 21-6 and took 2nd to Lawrenceville School teammate Bob Fish, who hit a PR of 22-0 ¼.
Foster also triple jumped 50-7 ½ and ran the hurdles in 7.89 this winter. He’s already No. 2 in school history in the long jump, No. 3 in the hurdles and No. 9 in the triple jump.
He’s Princeton’s first long jumper to reach indoor NCAAs since Ugwunna Ikpeowo in 1995. The last South Jersey athlete from Princeton to compete in NCAAs was Haddonfield’s Greta Feldman, who placed 5th in the 1,500 in 2012 in 4:14.76.
Drayton is expected to run the 400 leg on Georgetown’s distance medley, which is also seeded 11th.
The Hoyas set a school record and meet record with a 10:54.18 at the Alex Wilson Invitational at Notre Dame last month. That broke the record of 10:54.77 at Penn State in 2016 (the leadoff on that team was Andrea Keklek, whose sister Hannah was the zookeeper at the Boston Zoo in charge of Foles the goat following the Eagles’ Super Bowl win over the Patriots – you can read about that here)
Drayton PR’d last month when she won the Big East Championships in Chicago with a 54.44, No. 7 in Georgetown history. She’s the first Georgetown woman to win a Big East 400 title since Deseree King in 2014 and the first South Jersey girl to win a Big East title for Georgetown since Ocean City’s Renee Tomlin won the 1,000 in 2:46.32 in 2009.
Georgetown’s likely DMR lineup has 2:04 half-miler Melissa Riggins leading off, Drayton on the 400, 2:00 half-miler Katy-Ann McDonald on the 800 and 4:34 miler Grace Jensen anchoring.
The women’s distance medley is scheduled for 5:45 p.m. Friday. The long jump is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday.
For complete entry lists, click here for men and here for women.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 