Cherokee’s Luciano Pizarro surpassed 60 feet for the first time indoors during the shot put competition at the Big Ten Conference Championships Saturday at SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
Pizarro, a Penn State junior, only had two legal throws, but hit 60-8 ½ on his 5th throw. He threw 58-11 ½ on his first.
Pizarro’s previous indoor PR was a 59-10 ¼ just last weekend in a home meet in State College. Before that it was 59-9 ½ from a home meet last month. His indoor PR coming into the season was 57-10 ¼ at last year’s Big Ten meet in Geneva, Ohio. So his top three indoor meets have been his last three meets, and he’s thrown at least 58-4 ¾ in all five meets this winter.
Outdoors, Pizarro threw 65-0 ¾ at the 2023 Big Ten meet in Bloomington, Ind. That’s 4th-best ever by a South Jersey high school alum behind World Championship medalist Josh Awotunde of Delsea [73-1 ½], Bridgeton’s Braheme Days Jr. of Bridgeton [66-3 ½] and Paulsboro’s Jon Kalnas [66-2 ¾].
Unfortunately, Penn State does not have an all-time top-10- in its record book. They do have a top-5 that I updated as far back as I could, which is 2010. So this makeshift all-time list might be missing a few names, but it’s the best I could do:
67-3 ½ … Darrell Hill, 2015
65-7 … C.J. Hunter, 1990
65-1 ¼ … Joe Kovacs, 2011
62-6 ½ … Phil Caraher, 1991
62-1 ¼ … Blake Eaton, 2011
61-0 … Jon Yohman, 2017
61-7 … Logan Caldwell, 2012
60-9 ¼ … Ben Peterson, 2020
60-8 ½ … Luciano Pizarro, 2024
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 