Highland’s Floyd Whitaker, a sophomore at Oklahoma, recorded the best indoor triple jump ever by a South Jersey native Saturday and placed 3rd in the Big 12 Conference Championships in Lubbock, Texas.
Whitaker soared 52-3 ¼ on his 3rd jump, the best indoor jump ever by a South Jersey athlete. The previous South Jersey alumni best indoors was Whitaker’s 51-5 ½ in January of 2022 in a meet in Minneapolis competing unattatched because his previous college – the Univeristy of Minnesota – doesn’t have an indoor track program.
Whitaker has an outdoor PR of 52-6 ¼ from World Juniors in Cali, Columbia, in August of 2022. That’s the No. 2 jump ever by a South Jersey alum, behind a 53-6 ½ by Greg Foster of Shawnee in Flagstaff in May 1988. Foster’s son Greg currently competes for Princeton and won the Ivy League long jump in Cambridge, Mass., while Whitaker was triple jumping in Texas.
After opening with a 49-10 ½ and a foul, Whitaker had three straight jumps over 50 feet – 52-3 ¼, 50-11 ½ and 51-7. This was only his fourth meet for Oklahoma. He jumped 51-3 ½ last month in another meet in Lubbock, so he recorded his two-best jumps as a Sooner Saturday.
Whitaker jumped 50-2 ½ at Highland when he won the 2019 Meet of Champions at Northern Burlington.
https://cornellbigred.com/sports/2009/7/27/MTRACK_0727094036.aspx?id=324
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 