One of the best stories to come out of the 2023 track season is the remarkable improvement that Burlington Township graduate Jasmine Broadway made at Rowan.
Broadway never broke 25.50 in high school, but since arriving in Glassboro she’s improved from 26.60 indoors as a freshman to 25.84 last spring to 25.48 this past indoor season to one of the fastest in the country this spring.
Broadway placed 5th in the 200-meter dash final at the NCAA Championships on Saturday, earning All-America honors a year after she placed 14th in the 200 in her own conference meet.
Broadway came into the spring season with a PR of 25.16 from February in Boston and dropped that to 24.85 in her outdoor debut at Widener. She ran 24.76 in Columbia, S.C., a few weeks later and then 24.46 when she won the conference meet.
This past Thursday, she ran 24.18 in the trials at NCAA Division 3 Nationals in Rochester, smashing the school record of 24.36 – set by Pemberton graduate Shailah Williams when she won the 2015 NJAC meet at Ramapo.
She followed that with a 24.33 and 5th place in the final, making her the third short sprinter in Rowan history to earn All-America honors. Karen Corsey placed 8th in the 100 in 1992 and Williams was 4th in the 60 and 1st in the 200 indoors in 2014, 4th in the 60 and 3rd in the 200 indoors in 2016 and 8th in the 200 outdoors in 2016.
Overall, Broadway is now a two-time All-America. She ran on Rowan’s 8th-place 4-by-4 team indoors.
This past weekend, she also ran on two very fast Rowan relay teams that just missed earning All-America honors.
In the 4-by-100, she ran with Hillsborough’s Kat Pederson, Woodstown’s Molly Lodge and Triton’s Nevaeh Lorjuste, running 47.53 and placing 13th overall, and in the 4-by-4, she joined Sosa Caceres, Lodge and Lorjuste, placing 9th in 3:49.43.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 