Big weekend for Woodstown graduate Molly Lodge, who shattered one Rowan school record, recorded her 2nd NJAC individual win and ran on her 4th winning relay team.
She was one of six South Jersey winners at the conference meet from Rowan or Stockton.
Lodge, a junior at Rowan, ran 11.94 to place 2nd in the 100-meter dash behind Zrreyah Moore of Rutgers-Newark, who ran 11.84, tying the meet record set in 2008 by Ebony Barnes of New Jersey City University.
Lodge broke the school record of 11.95 set by Aaniyah Robinson of Passaic County Tech in the prelims of the 2018 AARTFC Championships in Brockport, N.Y.
Lodge’s previous PR was 12.14 in the prelims at last year’s NJAC Championships.
Lodge has great range – she’s run the flat 400 in 56.88, she won an NJAC title in 2022 in the 200, she’s high jumped and triple jumped, she’s run the high hurdles – but her strongest event has been the 400-meter hurdles, and she won it on Sunday at Stockton in 1:02.26, just 25-100ths of a second off her lifetime-best 1:02.01 at least year’s NJAC meet in Mahwah.
She’s not far off the school record set by Melirah Searcy of Edison of of 1:01.49 from the 2015 NJAC meet, also in Mahwah.
Lodge is No. 8 in NCAA Division 3 in the intermediates with her 1:02.26 – which she’s actually run twice this year – and No. 20 in the 100.
On Sunday, Lodge also led off Rowan’s winning 1,600-meter relay team, which ran 3:51.30, No. 16 in NCAA Division 3 so far this spring. Jasmine Pope from Pennsauken, senior Kathleen Pederson of Hillsborough and Triton’s Nevaeh Lorjuste also ran, with Lorjuste anchoring in 55.48.
Lodge has now entered 23 events in her college career at the NJAC championships and medaled 22 times. The only exception was Rowan’s 400-meter relay team at the 2022 outdoor meet, which was DQ’ed.
In high school, Lodge had PRs of 12.68 and 25.83 and never ran anything over 200 meters, either flat or over hurdles. She ran her first-ever 400IH race in March 2023 at the Washington & Lee Carnival in Lexington, Va., and ran 1:04.61. By the end of the year, she was competing at NCAAs.
Also from Rowan:
♦ Lorjuste successfully defended her NJAC 400 title with a 57.05. She was also 4th in the 200 in 25.36 and ran on that 4-by-4. Pope was 2nd in the 400 in 58.43.
♦ Junior Anna Sasse of Williamstown won the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 11:01.71, an 18-second PR. She was also 3rd in the 1,500 in 4:42.13.
For Stockton:
♦ Freshman McKenna Pontari, a Mainland graduate, won the long jump with a collegiate personal-best 17-1 ½.
♦ Junior Michaela Pomatto from Egg Harbor Township won her 3rd consecutive conference title in the discus with a 148-1 throw. Pomatto won the 2022 Centennial Conference title at 123-10 in Collegeville as an Ursinus freshman and then won the NJAC last year at 129-10. She just PR’d three weeks ago at Widener with a 149-4.
♦ Lodge’s former high school teammate at Woodstown, Rutgers-Camden senior Alexis Marini, won the hammer throw with a near-PR 166-10. Her PR is 168-0, also from three weeks ago at Widener.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 