From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Some 16 South Jersey athletes have earned spots in the NCAA Division 1 Track and Field Championships, which begin later this month.

Division 1 track is split up into two regions – East and West. In each region, the top 48 athletes per event (in most cases) qualify for the preliminary rounds, which reduce the fields for nationals. The top 12 in each region advance to the National Championships.

The regional prelims are scheduled for May 24-27, with the East competing at North Florida’s Hodges Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla., and the West at Sacramento State’s Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, Calif.

The NCAA Championships are scheduled for June 7-10 at the University of Texas’s Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin.

First, here are some helpful links:

East Regional Men’s Qualifiers: Click here.
East Regional Women’s Qualifiers: Click here.
West Regional Men’s Qualifiers: Click here.
East Regional Women’s Qualifiers: Click here.

East live results from Jacksonville: Click here.
West live results from Sacramento: Click here.
Championship live results from Austin: Click here.

Leading the way for the South Jersey contingent is Winslow graduate Tionna Tobias, an Iowa junior.

Tobias qualified in the heptathlon, 100-meter hurdles and long jump. Because the heptathlon is so grueling, the qualifiers advance directly to the finals and don’t compete at prelims. That will allow Tobias to compete in her individual events at the West Regional if he chooses without worrying about another multi until next month. Her 5,640 score in the heptathlon at the conference meet was a huge PR.

Tobias qualified in the high hurdles with a 13.20 (in the Big Ten heptathlon) and in the long jump with a 20-2 ½ last month at a meet in Tucson, Ariz. She’s also listed on Iowa’s 400-meter relay team, but she’s not a regular on that unit. She did run a PR 23.97 as part of her Big Ten heptathlon win.

South Jersey’s top medal hopes are a pair of No. 6 seeds – Penn State’s Lucciano Pizarro from Cherokee in the shot put and Princeton’s Greg Foster from Lumberton in the long jump. Pizarro threw a PR 65-0 ¾ at Big Tens, and Foster long jumped a PR 26-1 ¾ at Heps at Franklin Field. Both will compete in Jacksonville.

Here’s a look at all of South Jersey’s qualifiers:

East
Women
Dennisha Page, Woodrow Wilson, Rutgers, 100, 200: Page, a Rutgers junior, ran a pair of PRs at Big Tens, winning the 200 in 23.08 and taking 6th in the 100 in 11.30. Page is now 3rd-fastest in South Jersey history in both the 100 [behind English Gardnerin the 200 [behind English Gardner 10.74 and Amandi Rhett’s 11.29] and the 200 [behind Gardner’s 22.62 and Gabrielle Farqu’arson’s 23.07].

Arianna Sharpe, Clayton, Auburn, 400: Arianna Sharpe PR’d with a 52.42 indoors, and her 53.28 in Tallahassee in March is an outdoor PR and qualified her for NCAAs. Sharpe and twin sister Amirah, both freshmen, both qualified in the 400 and are on Auburn’s 1,600-meter relay team, which ran 3:32.00 in Gainesville last month.

Amirah Sharpe, Clayton, Auburn, 400: Amirah ran 53.37 in Tallahassee to record her 400 qualifier. Although Amirah ran 1:00.41 for the intermediates in high school, she has yet to run one for Auburn.

Bryanna Craig, Millville, Purdue, High Jump,: Craig is the No. 4 Under-20 heptathlon in the world with her 5,460 score for 2nd to Tobias in the Big Ten meet, but she qualified for NCAAs in the high jump with her 5-8 ¾ high jump as part of the Drake Relays heptathlon.

Ashley Preston, Delsea, Villanova, Pole Vault: Preston makes her 3rd trip to NCAA East Prelims after going in 2019 and 2021. She just PR’d at the Penn Relays with a PR 13-2 ½ then won her 4th Big East title last weekend at her home track.

Aliya Garozzo, Paul VI, Penn, 1,600-Meter Relay: Garozzo didn’t compete at all from mid-March until last weekend, but she did run sub-60 for the intermediates this spring and is listed on Penn’s 4-by-4 roster. The Quakers ran 3:34.30 at Penn, not far off the school record of 3:32.12 from 2019.

Men
Lucciano Pizarro, Cherokee, Penn State, Shot Put Pizarro had the five biggest throws of his life at the Big Ten Championships and moved into the No. 4 spot in Nittany Lion history (behind three Olympians) with his 65-0 ¾. This is his first trip to NCAAs.

Sincere Rhea, St. Augustine, Miami, 110-meter hurdles, 13.48: Rhea recorded a huge PR with that 13.48 in the prelims of ACCs earlier this month in Raleigh. This is Rhea’s 4th trip to NCAAs and his 2nd since transferring from Penn State to Miami.

Greg Foster, Lumberton / Lawrenceville Prep, Princeton, Long Jump, Triple Jump: Foster PR’d at Penn with his 26-1 ¾ that makes him the No. 6 seed in the East Prelims in the long jump. He only triple jumped twice this spring but qualfied with a 50-2 ¾ at Heps.

Orion Joyner, Kingsway, Rhode Island, Triple Jump: Joyner sailed over 50 feet for the first time at the Atlantic 10 Championships this weekend, where he placed 2nd with a 50-4 ¾. This will be his first trip to the NCAAs.

Zach Manorowitz, Pennsville, Rider, Long Jump: Manorowitz equalled his lifetime-best of 25-0 ¾ at a home meet in Lawrenceville in April. This is his 2nd NCAA appearance. He competed in the East Prelims in Bloomington, Ind., in 2021.

Keven Kevelier, Collingswood, Monmouth, High Jump: Kevelier was more of a triple jumper in high school than a high jumper – he triple jumped 47-5 ¼ at Collingswood and only high jumped 6-4. But he’s made huge strides in the high jump at Monmouth and cleared 6-10 ¾ at a meet at Lehigh last month to qualify for NCAAs. That’s No. 2 in Monmouth history, behind Joe Marini’s 6-11 ½ at a meet in High Point, N.C., in April of 2016.

Austin Gabay, Cinnaminson, Duke, 1,500: Gabay ran 3:42.94 in April at Wake Forest – equivalent of a 4:00.78 mile – and snagged the final qualifying spot in the 1,500. This will be his first NCAA experience on the track, although he ran at the NCAA Southeast Region Cross Country Championships in Louisville in November and placed 49th of 222 runners.

Mike Mazero, Paul VI, Cornell, 4-by-400: Cornell qualified for the 1,600-meter relay with a 3:07.95 to win the Heps at Franklin Field earlier this month. If Cornell goes with the same lineup as Heps, Joshua Gittens (from Elmwood Park, Bergen County, and Paramus Catholic) and Domenic Barresi will run the first two legs, followed by Mazero and Tomas Kersulis.  Mazero split 47.07 at Heps and Kersulis, an indoor All-America, split 44.84.

West
Women
Tionna Tobias, Winslow Twp., Iowa, 100 hurdles, long jump, 400 relay, heptathlon: We wrote about Tobias above, but this is her 2nd trip to NCAAs. She qualified in the hurdles last year.

Nylah Perry, Winslow Twp., Iowa, 400 hurdles: Tobias’s high school and college teammate will also make the trip to Sacramento. Perry ran an intermediates PR of 58.61 last month in Gainesville to qualify for a repeat trip to NCAA prelims. Last year, Perry advanced to the second round in the intermediates.

Men
No South Jersey qualifiers in the men’s West Preliminary.