Cinnaminson’s Austin Gabay, a junior at Duke, capped a fantastic Penn Relays Saturday with a leadoff leg on the Blue Devils’ four-mile relay team, which ran the 17th-fastest time in college history.
Gabay led off with a 4:03.14 split, and Duke placed 6th in 16:14.67 in a race that produced seven of the 19-fastest times ever run in college track history.
The top 10 teams all finished within 3 ½ seconds of one another, led by Villanova, which ran 16:14.03 with two Mercer County runners – Hopewell Valley’s Sean Dolan and Allentown’s Liam Murphy – running the last two legs.
Wisconsin [16:14.24], Washington [16:14.31], Virginia [16:14.48], Georgetown [16:14.64] and Duke [16:14.47] made it six finishers in less than half a second. So the first six teams were separated by about 2 ½ meters at the finish line.
Grad student James Lee from Colorado [4:01.36], sophomore Beck Wittstadt from Baltimore [4:02.90] and Nick Dahl from Germantown Friends [4:07.27] followed Gabay for Duke.
Gabay and his teammates broke the 50-year-old school record of 16:22.34 set in 1973 by Scott Eden, Steve Wheeler, Roger Beardmore and Bob Wheeler at the Texas Relays.
16:03.24 … Oregon, 2009
16:04.54 … Michigan, 2005
16:07.96 … Arkansas, 1999
16:08.81 … Arkansas, 2000
16:08.9h … Oregon, 1962
16:09.67 … Oregon, 2014
16:09.84 … Arkansas, 2002
16:10.6h … Villanova, 1974
16:11.65 … Arkansas, 1998
16:14.03 … Villanova, 2023
16:14.24 … Wisconsin, 2023
16:14.31 … Washington, 2023
16:14.1h … UTEP, 1976
16:14.48 … Virginia, 2023
16:14.64 … Georgetown, 2023
16:14.4h … Manhattan, 1974
16:14.67 … Duke, 2023
Gabay also ran a 2:54.74 leadoff on Duke’s 6th-place distance medley team, which also included Jackson Walker on the 400, Wittstadt on the 800 and Dahl on the anchor. They finished just three seconds behind winner Wisconsin, which ran 9:33.82. That time is No. 2 in Duke history, just off the school record set by that 1973 group, with Beardmore, Miek Murphy and the Wheeler brothers.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 