Woodstown graduate Molly Lodge, a junior at Rowan, is getting close to the school record in the 400-meter hurdles.
Lodge ran 1:02.26 at the Larry Ellis Invitational at Princeton’s Weaver Stadium over the weekend, the No. 6 time in NCAA Division 3 this year and just a fraction of a second off her PR from last year’s NJAC Championships. Lodge placed 2nd in 1:02.01 last year at Ramapo.
Rowan lists 1:01.49 by Melirah Searcy as the school record. Searcy, an Edison graduate, ran that at the 2015 NJAC Championships at Ramapo. Lodge’s 1:02.01 is fastest by a Rowan runner since then.
What makes all of this so interesting is that Lodge never ran the intermediates or even a flat 400 at Woodstown. She never ran anything longer than the 200 in high school.
Lodge never even ran an intermediates race as a Rowan freshman and it wasn’t until the Danny Curran Invitational in Chester, Pa., a year ago, that she contested it for the first time, running a respectable 1:04.46.
She lowered her PR to 1:04.13 in a home meet and then had that 1:02.01 breakthrough a few weeks later. She even qualified for the NCAA Championships in her first year as an intermediate hurdler.
Rowan competes this weekend at the Widener Invitational in Chester. Lodge is entered in the intermediates at the Penn Relays, with the race scheduled for 5:25 p.m. on Day 1 at Penn, next Thursday.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 