Tiona Tobias earned 2nd-team All-America honors in the long jump Saturday with her performance at NCAA Division 1 Nationals in Boston.
Tobias, a Winslow graduate native who’s a senior at Iowa, jumped 20-9, only 3 ½ inches off her lifetime-best 21-0 ½ from last month at a meet in Albuquerque.
She was the No. 15 seed going into the competition, so she jumped well above her seeding.
Tobias came close to also qualifying in both the 60-meter hurdles (she was 26th at 8.17) and pentathlon (she was 24th at 4,049 points). She reached NCAAs last spring in the heptathlon after scoring 5,640 points to win the Big Ten title.
Tobias only got in three legal jumps but they were all outstanding – the 20-9 was on her 1st attempt, then she went 20-8 on her 2nd and 20-7 on her 4th.
Outdoors, Tobias has PRs of 13.11 in the 100-meter hurdles, 20-9 ¼ in the long jump (with a 20-2 ¼ wind-legal PR) and 5-7 ¼ in the high jump as well as her 5,640 in the heptathlon.
Iowa is scheduled to open its outdoor season Friday at the Southern Florida Alumni Invitational in Tampa.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 