Paul VI’s Aliya Garozzo tied Penn’s hurdles record and won her 3rd Ivy League Championship Sunday at Harvard’s Gordon Track and Tennis Center in Cambridge, Mass.
Garozzo ran a lifetime-best 8.29 in Saturday’s trials, leading all qualifiers into Sunday’s final, where she won easily in 8.37, nearly two meters ahead of 2nd-place Lauren Yeboah-Kodie of Brown.
Garozzo came into the meet with a PR of 8.49 from last year’s Ivy League Championships in Hanover, N.H. Her season-best before this weekend was 8.50 last month in a meet in Boston.
She ran only 9-100ths seconds off the Ivy League Championships meet record of 8.20 set at the 2018 meet in Hanover by Dartmouth’s Cha’Mia Rothwel, who also transferred to Duke.
Her 8.29 tied the Penn school record set by Skyla Wilson at the 2022 Ivy League Championships at the Armory. That was Wilson’s final indoor meet for Penn before she transferred to Miami and then to Duke.
Garozzo also placed 4th in the 400 in 54.95. She PR’d at 54.47 in Saturday’s trials, No. 5 in school history.
Garozzo ran on Penn’s 1st-place 4-by-4 team at last year’s outdoor Ivy League Championships at Franklin Field, but this is her first individual first place.
Garozzo is the 3rd South Jersey collegian to run 8.30 or faster this saeson. Winslow’s Tionna Tobias of Iowa ran 8.15 and Eastern’s Jailya Ash of UConn ran 8.19.
7.80 … Nia Ali [Pleasantville], Albuquerque, 2014
8.15 … Tionna Tobias [Winslow Twp.], Albuquerque, 2024
8.19 … Jailya Ash [Eastern] 2022
8.19 … Shameeka Marshall [Oakcrest], 2005
8.25 … Ste’cye McNeil [Winslow Twp.], New York, 2015
8.29 … Aliya Garozzo [Paul VI], 2024
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 