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

The Rowan women, with four South Jersey legs, ran their fastest 4-by-4 in five years and just missed advancing to the final at the NCAA Division 3 Championships.

Senior Amantha Sosa Caceres from Absegami, sophomore Jasmine Broadway of Burlington Township, sophomore Molly Lodge of Woodstown and sophomore Nevaeh Lorjuste from Triton ran 3:49.43 and placed 9th in the prelims at St. John Fisher University in Rochester, N.Y. The top eight advanced to Saturday’s final.

Lorjuste anchored in 54.97. She races in the open 400 later Friday.

It was Rowan’s fastest time this year and the program’s fastest time since the 2018 team ran 3:48.28 at a meet at Swarthmore. Dominique Peters from Lawrenceville, Jackie Ansong of Bordentown, Brianna Angelella from Manahawkin and Miyah Sturdivant of Timber Creek ran on that team.

Rowan’s previous season-best performance was a 3:50.31 at the NJAC Championships in Mahwah with the same four runners and Pederson leading off (but Lodge running 2nd, Lorjuste 3rd and Broadway anchor).

Rowan is 16th all-time in NCAA Division 3 with its 3:44.60 to place 4th at the 2014 NCAA Division 3 Championships at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, the geographic epicenter of the state.

Cherokee’s Jessalyn Wright, South Brunswick’s Jamie Thompson, Hillside’s Tashay Wilson and Edison’s Melirah Searcy ran on that team.

The cutoff for advancing was 3:47.85. The College of New Jersey got in as the No. 8 seed for the final.

Sometimes I miss one, and I sure missed one this time.

When we last wrote about Fatimah Owens, she was teaming up with Bryanna Craig to help Millville win the 2019 South Jersey Group 4 championship at Washington Township. You can read that story here.

We lost track of Owens after she graduated from Millville in the spring of 2019, but she went to Towson University in Maryland, where she’s now a junior and one of the top throwers in the country.

On Saturday, Owens will throw the discus at the NCAA Championships Eastern Preliminaries at Hodges Stadium on the North Florida campus in Jacksonville. It will be Owens’ first NCAA meet and she’ll be competing at the same time as Craig, now a freshman at Purdue and one of the top Under-20 heptathletes in the world, will be high jumping.

Owens was a solid thrower at Millville, but it’s definitely been a steady climb to where she is now.

She didn’t surpass 35 feet until her junior year and didn’t even start throwing the discus until her senior year. She had high school PRs of 40-3 ½ from her win at South Jersey Group 4 sectionals and 122-10 from the Meet of Champions a few weeks later at Northern Burlington.

Owens started showing promise quickly as a freshman at Towson, improving to 134-1 in the discus the second time she threw in college and hitting 140-1 by the end of the season while PR’ing at 40-11 in the shot.

By last spring, she was at 42-8 ¼ and 157-10 and this past indoor season she made a dramatic improvement in the shot, throwing 46 feet in back-to-back meets.

She popped two huge PRs two weeks ago at ECACs at George Mason in Fairfax, Va., winning the discus with a 166-5 and taking 5th in the shot at 47-10.

Owens now ranks 2nd in Towson history in school history in the discus, just five inches behind only Phontavia Sawyer, who threw 166-10 at the 2019 Penn Relays. She’s also No. 5 in school history in the shot.

Owens throws at 1 p.m. Saturday in Jacksonville.

Iowa sophomore Nylah Perry from Winslow Township overcame challenging Lane 2 and advanced in the 400-meter hurdles Thursday night at the NCAA West Preliminaries in Sacramento.

Perry ran 59.20 and advanced as the 4th-fastest hurdler out of six preliminary races who didn’t finish in the top three in her race.

Next for Perry is the quarterfinals at 7:25 p.m. on Saturday back at Sacramento State’s Hornet Stadium.

Perry PR’d at 58.61 last month in Gainesville after running 59.67 as a Hawkeye freshman. That ranks her 9th in Iowa history with two years to go.

Click to access 24880bad-2022-23-cc-track-guide.pdf

Saturday’s race is a national quarterfinal. The top three finishers in each of three heats as well as the next three-fastest advance to the NCAA Championships in Austin July 7-10.

Matt Iuvara is new to track. He’s even newer to the intermediate hurdles.

Yet Iuvara ran 55.05 Thursday night at the Cherokee Final Countdown Last Chance Meet in just his 5th lifetime 400-meter hurdles race.

Iuvara, a Haddon Heights senior, didn’t run track until he was a junior, but he had success almost instantly. In his 3rd lifetime 800, he ran 1:59.20 and placed 2nd in the state Group 2 meet at the Bubble in February 2022. He lowered his 800 time to 1:58.93 last spring, his first year of outdoor track, and although he’s PR’d in the 400 and 800 this spring – he ran 49.96 at South Jersey Elite and 1:57.87 at Haddonfield Distance Night – he’s progress in the 400IH has been crazy.

Iuvara ran his first couple intermediate hurdles races in dual meets – 56.84 vs. Haddonfield and then 55.54 vs. Sterling. But his first major race wasn’t until the Camden County Championships two weeks ago, where he ran 56.21 and won. He PR’d at 55.57 winning the Haddonfield Invitational last week before going 55.05 Thursday at Cherokee.

He took 2nd to Graham Greene of Germantown Friends, who ran 53.87. That’s No. 2 in Pennsylvania this year, behind Anthony Collins of Harry S Truman of Levittown, who ran 53.29 last month in a meet at Randall’s Island.

Iuvara now ranks 5th in South Jersey, No. 1 in South Jersey Group 2 and No. 4 state-wide in Group 2.

In the last 20 years, the only faster Colonial Conference intermediate hurdlers are Haddonfield’s Jordan Harris, who ran 54.75 at the 2011 South Jersey Group 2 meet at Buena, and Cameron Kee of Haddon Heights, who ran 53.88 at the 2019 Group 2 states at Central Regional in Bayville.

At the 1997 Meet of Champions at South Plainfield, legendary Fred Sharpe of Paulsboro ran 51.62 and Woodbury’s Andy Carson 53.84.

Tionna Tobias continued her astonishing breakthrough season in the 100-meter hurdles Thursday with the 4th-fastest time ever recorded by a New Jersey native.

Racing in the NCAA Championships West Preliminaries at Hornet Stadium on the Sacramento (Calif.) State campus, the Winslow graduate and Iowa junior ran 13.11 to easily advance to Saturday’s quarterfinals.

Click to access 029-1.pdf

Tobias lowered her PR from 13.20, which she ran earlier this month on Day 1 of the Big Ten Championship heptathlon, which she won.

Her time is No. 2 in school history behind current teammate Paige Magee, who ran 12.90 in the prelims at the Big Ten Championships. Magee ran 13.06 Thursday and joins Tobias in the quarters on Friday. A third Iowa hurdler, Myreanna Bebe, ran 13.12 and also advanced. They’re the three-fastest Iowa hurdlers in school history.

Click to access 180ed172-top-10-all-time-womens.pdf

Tobias came into the season with a PR of 13.59 from Day 1 of last year’s Big Ten heptathlon. She lowered that to 13.55 last month in a meet in Gainesville and then down to 13.51 in a meet in Waco, also last month. Then came the huge breakthrough down to 13.20 in Bloomington on May 12.

Her 13.11 – with a legal 0.5 wind – puts her behind only Olympians Nia Ali [12.34 at Worlds in Doha in 2019] and Sydney McLaughlin [12.65 in Walnut, Calif., in 2021] as well as Neptune’s Dawn Bowles [12.74 in Indianapolis in 1997] on the all-time New Jersey list.

Tobias has already qualified for the NCAA Championships in Austin June 7-10 in the heptathlon. Because of the nature of the event, there is no qualifying round in the NCAA Prelims.

Tobias went 20-0 1/4 in the long jump immediately after the hurdles but fell just short of advancing to Saturday’s quarterfinals.

Pennsville graduate Arianna Smith, a junior at Princeton, advanced in the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Eastern Region Preliminaries Thursday evening in Jacksonville.

Smith, who randomly drew the difficult Lane 8, ran 58.58 to make it to Friday’s quarterfinals. Smith just PR’d at 57.84 in her last race, the final of the Ivy League Championships at Franklin Field earlier this month. Thursday’s 58.58 in the outer-most lane is her 2nd-fastest time ever.

Smith’s 57.84 broke a 40-year-old Princeton school record – 58.19 set by Sally Anderson when she was 9th at the 1983 NCAA Championships in Houston.

The 400IH quarterfinals are scheduled for 7:25 p.m. Saturday. There will be three races with eight runners, with the top three finishers in each race and the next-three-fastest runners advancing to the semifinals at the NCAA Championshiops in Austin next month.

It was wind-aided, but it’s still very fast.

Wilson graduate Dennisha Page, a Rutgers junior, recorded the 6th-fastest qualifying time of the NCAA Eastern Prelims Thursday evening and one of the fastest times ever recorded by a New Jersey native.

Page ran 22.88 in the NCAA Championships first round, easily advancing her to Friday’s quarterfinals. The race was assisted by a tailwind of 3.1 meters per second – above the 2.0 that’s allowed for record-setting purposes.

According to the wind correction calculator, a 22.88 with a 3.1 assisting tailwind equals a 23.06 with no wind or a 22.92 with a legal 2.0 wind.

So it’s very fast.

The only New Jersey women who’ve run faster in any conditions are Montclair’s Me’Lisa Barber [22.37 in 2005], Union Catholic graduater and world 400IH record holder Sydney McLaughlin [22.39 in 2018], Eastern’s Olympic gold medalist English Gardner [22.62 in 2013], Trenton’s Wenda Vereen [22.63 in 1993] and Montclair’s Mikele Barber [22.73 in 2007].

Page ran a wind-legal PR of 23.08 earlier this month in the prelims of the Big Ten Championships in Bloomington, Ind. This is her first NCAA meet. Page began her academic career at Syracuse but has blossomed at Rutgers, where she set the school record of 11.30 at Big Ten’s and is 1-100th of a second off the school record in the 200, a 23.07 by Williamstown’s Gabrielle Farquharson at the 2016 Big Ten Championships in Lincoln, Neb.

All six qualifying races were wind-aided to varying degrees.

The 200 quarterfinal races are scheduled for 7:50 p.m. Saturday. The top three in each of three heats plus the next three-fastest times advance to the NCAA Championships next month in Austin.

Rowan cruised through the 1,600-meter trials at the NCAA Championships in Rochester, N.Y., Thursday and goes into the final as the No. 5 seed although they ran the 4th-fastest time.

The final closes the meet at St. John Fisher University at 5 p.m. Saturday.

Sterling’s Marquise Young got the Profs safely out the hole, and Nana Agyemang, a Parsippany graduate, ran the second leg. Jah’mere Beasley, who ran on Rowan’s 400-meter relay team that advanced to the final and also advanced in the 200, then split 46.66 and Amara Conte from Ferris High in Jersey City anchored in 46.61.

It was a very fast race for a preliminary, with Claremont-Mudd-Scripps [3:09.26], Wisconsin-La Crosse [3:09.38] and Rowan all running sub-3:11 in the first heat and Mount Union [3:09.38] and SUNY Geneseo [3:10.22] doing it in the second heat.

The 3:10.70 is the fastest Rowan has ever run in a preliminary race and their 5th-fastest time ever. They ran 3:10.06 when they placed 2nd at nationals last year (with John Owens, Agyemang, Beasley and Conte), 3:10.07 with Young, Agyemang, Beasley and Conte last month in Columbia, S.C., and 3:10.56 to win the 2012 NCAA Division 3 nationals with Jayce Maxwell of Monsignor Donovan, Taylor Purdue of Highland Lakes, Ali Ejaz from Glassboro and Demetrius Rooks of Absegami.

Burlington Township’s Jasmine Broadway recorded the 2nd-fastest qualifier to the 200-meter dash final at the NCAA Division 3 Championships in Rochester, N.Y.

Broadway ran a lifetime-best 24.18, lowering her own Rowan school record from 24.33, which she ran earlier this month when she won the NJAC title at Ramapo.

Broadway, a Rowan sophomore, won the first of three heats. Each winner and the next-five-fastest advanced to the final at 3:50 p.m. on Saturday.

The only faster qualifier was Lauren Jarrett, a freshman at Wisconsin-La Crosse, who was 1st across the line in the 2nd heat in 24.09. Jarrett was aided by a 0.9 tailwind. Broadway’s race had no tailwind.

At Burlington Township, Broadway had a PR of 25.60 from her win at the 2021 Central Jersey Group 3 sectionals at Jackson Liberty. She went on to place 2nd at states at Pennsauken in 25.67.

She ran 25.84 as a Rowan freshman but got down to 25.19 this past indoor season and earned All-America honors after a running a leg on Rowan’s 4-by-400 team, which placed 8th at indoor nationals in Birmingham, Ala.

She broke 25 seconds for the first time early last month with a 24.85 in a meet at Widener, then lowered her PR to 24.76 in Columbia, S.C., in late April, and then 24.33 in the trials of the NJAC meet, which she won in 24.46.