Paul VI’s Aliya Garozzo, Wilson’s Dennisha Page and Winslow Township’s Tionna Tobias will all be headed to the NCAA Division 1 track championships next weekend in Boston.
Garozzo, a junior at Penn, is scheduled to anchor the Quakers’ 1,600-meter relay team, which is the No. 8 seed with its school-record 3:29.86. Penn ran that time at the Clemson Tiger Paw Invitational on Feb. 9.
The first three legs for Penn are sophomore Christiana Nwachuku of Kent Place High in Summit, junior Jocelyn Niemiec of Arnold O. Beckman High in Tustin, Calif., and sophomore Isabella Whittaker of Mount DeSales Academy in Laurel, Md.
Penn has never placed in the 1,600-meter relay at NCAA Division 1 nationals. The Quakers earned All-America honors outdoors in 2019 when they placed 17th in 3:36.8 in Austin.
Garozzo ran 8.29 in the 60-meter hurdles last week at the Ivy League Championsions in Cambridge, Mass., to tie Penn’s school record. She ran a 52.47 anchor leg when Penn ran 3:29.86 earlier this month.
Page was one of 16 qualifiers in the 60-meter dash, thanks to her PR 7.18 in the prelims at the same meet at Clemson. That’s No. 4 in Clemson history and 4th-fastest ever by a New Jersey woman. She’s also seeded 8th.
Page also ran 23.13 at Clemson but missed the qualifying cutoff by 15-100ths of a second. She’s ranked 30th in the world and 11th among U.S. women in the 60 and 38th in the world in the 200 and 24th among U.S. women.
Tobias qualified by long jumping a lifetime-best 21-0 1/2 at a meet in Albuquerque in early February. She competed at NCAAs last spring in Bloomington, Ind., in the heptathlon after winning the Big Ten title with 5,640 points. It was at NCAAs last spring where she set her previous long jump PR of 20-9 1/4.
Tobias this winter ran 8.18 in the 60-meter hurdles but missed qualifying for NCAAs by 4-100ths of a second. She scored 4,049 points in a January pentathlon in Iowa City and missed the NCAA cutoff by 83 points.
This will be both Garozzo and Page’s first trip to NCAAs. Page did run the 100 and 200 at NCAA outdoor East Prelims last spring as a junior at Rutgers but did not make it to the championships in Austin.
The NCAA indoor championships are scheduled for Thursday through Saturday next week at the TRACK in Boston.
Page races in the women’s 60-meter dash semifinals at 7:18 p.m. next Friday, March 8, with the final scheduled for 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 9. The 4-by-4 is a final only, scheduled for 8:20 p.m. on Saturday to close out the meet. Tobias jumps at 7 p.m. Friday
Live results will be here starting next Thursday.
Full women’s acceptance list is here.
Full men’s list is here.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 