Pennsville’s Arianna Smith destroyed a 40-year-old Princeton school record in the 400-meter hurdles Sunday and ran a huge high hurdles PR at the Ivy League Championships at Franklin Field.
Smith had a fantastic weekend, with two PRs, a school record, a 2nd in the intermediates, a 3rd in the highs and a blazing 53.97 anchor on the Tigers’ 3rd-place 1,600-meter relay team.
In the intermediates, Smith ran 57.84, finishing just behind Harvard freshman Chloe Fair, who won the race in 57.75.
She broke the school record of 58.19 set by Sally Anderson when she placed 9th at the 1983 NCAA Championships at the University of Houston.
Smith’s previous PR was 58.76 at the Big Five Meet on the same Franklin Field track in West Philadelphia.
Her time puts her No. 36 among U.S. women this year, 2-100ths of a second behind Eastern graduate Jewel Ash of Charleston Southern, who ran 57.72 last month in Knoxville.
It’s also 5th-fastest ever run by a South Jersey woman:
55.78 … Tonya Lee [Rancocas Valley], April 21, 1996, Walnut, Calif.
56.21 … Krystal Cantey [Winslow Twp.], May 26, 2007, Gainesville, Fla.
56.87 … Evann Thompson [Lenape], May 30, 2014, Jacksonville, Fla.
57.16 … Jewel Ash [Eastern], May 9, 2022, High Point, N.C.
57.84 … Arianna Smith [Pennsville], May 6, 2023, Philadelphia
In the 100-meter highs, Smith moved into the No. 2 spot on the all-time Princeton list with a huge PR 13.73. The school record is listed on Princeton’s web site as 13.08 by Nicole Harrison in the 1997 ECAC Championships in Fairfax, Va. But her winning time in that meet was actually 13.18, and the World Athletics web site doesn’t show her with a 13.08 at any point.
Smith’s previous PR was 13.94, also from the Big Five Meet at Franklin Field. She lowered that to 13.83 in the trials on Saturday before PR’ing again with 13.73 in the final.
Smith ran 14.44 in high school when she won the Salem County Championships in 2019, but she didn’t compete in the high hurdles again until this spring, so that’s three years in a row without contesting the 100-meter highs.
She ran 14.11 at Penn in her first high hurdles race since high school in March and is now 2nd-fastest in Princeton history just six weeks later.
Princeton placed 3rd in the 4-by-4 with Smith on the anchor leg. India Ingemi, Adelaide Asante and Brianna Mponzi ran the first three legs for the Tigers, whose 3:39.25 is No. 2 in school history behind the school record of 3:39.04 set at 2015 Heps, also at Franklin Field.
Penn won the 1,600-meter relay in 3:37.26 with Paul VI graduate Aliya Garozzo splitting 55.70 on the 3rd leg. The time is No. 7 on the all-time Penn performance list.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 