From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

On June 1, 2019, Arianna Smith won the state Group 1 title in the 100-meter hurdles in 14.84 at Franklin High.

Then she didn’t run another high hurdles race for nearly four years.

Until Saturday.

When she ran the No. 6 time in Princeton history.

Smith, a Pennsville graduate and junior at Princeton, runs the hurdles indoors, but has been almost exclusively an intermediate hurdler outdoors since she arrived at Old Nassau in 2020.

Smith ran 59.69 last spring in a meet in Coral Gables, Fla., which is No. 6 in Princeton history. But last weekend, she got a rare opportunity to race the 100-meter highs at the Penn Invitational at Franklin Field, and she responded with a time of 14.11 and 2nd place, behind Army’s Saydee Aganus, who ran 14.01.

That makes her the only hurdler in Princeton history ranked in the top-6 in both the highs and intermediates.

That’s No. 3 in the Ivy League so far this year, behind two Harvard hurdlers – Izzy Goudros (13.66) and Josefina Biernacki (13.81) – and 1-100th of a second faster than Penn’s Aliya Garozzo from Paul VI, who finished just behind Smith at the Penn Challenge with a PR of her own at 14.12. Garozzo – 3rd in the Heps 500 indoors – also ran 59.96 to win the 400IH at the Penn Challenge, not far off her PR of 59.76 from last year’s 2nd-place finish at Heps (just ahead of Smith).

Princeton is at the Raleigh Relays this weekend, and we’ll likely see Smith race the 400IH for the first time this spring.