Rowan freshman Kwaku Nkrumah leads all qualifiers into the final of the 110-meter hurdles at the NCAA Division 3 Championships.
Nkrumah, whose PR at Teaneck over the 39-inch hurdles was 14.44, ran 14.25 over the 42-inch barriers Friday at St. John Fisher in Rochester, N.Y.
Nkrumah didn’t break 15 seconds over the college hurdles until last month but gradually lowered his PR from 14.75 in early April at a home meet, 14.60 in mid-April at Princeton, 14.46 in late April in Columbia, S.C., and then the big breakthrough was a 14.25 to win the NJAC Championships at Ramapo earlier this month.
He ran 14.30 two weeks ago to win the AARTFC Championships in Selinsgrove, Pa., so he’s now run 14.25, 14.30 and 14.25 in his last three meets after not breaking 15 seconds until last month.
Nkrumah was first across the line in the 3rd of three heats of the 110-meter highs Friday, edging Enoch Ellis of MIT of Cambridge, Mass., by 1-100th of a second. The winner of each heat plus the next-five-fastest hurdlers advanced to the final.
Nkrumah, Ellis and MIT’s Kenneith Wei – who won the 3rd heat in 14.33 – were the only hurdlers under 14.40 in the trials.
The final is scheduled for 1:50 p.m. Saturday.
Rowan’s web site lists Garry Moore’s 13.40 from 1982 as the school record, but I think we’re all aware that’s not an accurate time. Maybe a hand time. The USTFCCCA web site confirms that Moore’s 13.90 is the actual fastest wind-legal FAT time by a Rowan hurdler.
I made an attempt to put together an all-time Glassboro State / Rowan 110-meter hurdles wind-legal performance list, and it looks like Nkrumah’s 14.25 is 6th-fastest in school history, although I could be missing one or two names. Rowan does not have an all-time top-10 on its web site, unfortunately. This is what I cobbled together:
13.90 … Garry Moore [Overbrook], 1982
14.01 … Stanley Moore [Overbrook], 1983
14.22 … Leon Devero [Linden], 1981
14.23 … Dave Benjamin [Freehold Twp.], 2017
14.24 … Bobby Cooks [McArthur, Hollywood, Fla.], 2018
14.25 … Kwaku Nkrumah [Teaneck], 2023
14.27 … Chase Tolliver [], 2017
14.28 … Tyler Garland [Deptford], 2019
14.00w… Dave Benjamin [Freehold Twp.], 2017
14.05w … Bobby Cooks [McArthur, Hollywood, Fla.], 2018
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 