For the 4th year in a row, Washington Township graduate Isabelle Deal is a javelin All-America.
Deal placed 8th in the javelin Thursday at the NCAA Division 3 Championships at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium in Myrtle Beach, S.C., with a throw of 137-9.
Deal – the No. 16 seed – opened competition with a 132-0 before hitting 137-9 on her 2nd throw of the trials. She threw 134-3 to finish the qualifying round and then closed with a foul and a couple 127-foot throws – 127-11 and 127-2.
She was sitting in 3rd place after the first flight – the lower-seeded throwers – and then hung on as only five of the 11 higher-seeded throwers passed her in the second flight. So she was seventh after the first round, and the top nine throwers got three more throws.
The 137-9 is Deal’s best throw since she transferred from Ursinus to Rowan last summer and her best overall since she threw 139-9 to place 6th at last year’s NCAA Division 3 Championships in Rochester. Her previous best throw this spring was a 135-8 in a meet at Widener. She threw her lifetime-best 155-0 – the Ursinus school record – last May in the AARTFC meet in Selinsgrove, Pa.
Deal also placed 8th at the 2021 nationals in Greensboro, N.C., at 135-1 and 6th in the 2022 meet in Geneva, Ohio, at 137-0.
Deal is the 3rd javelin All-America in Rowan women’s track history. Clayton’s Emma Painter placed 4th at 146-9 in the 1983 meet in Naperville, Ill., 2nd at 158-9 in 1984 in Northfield, Minn., and was national champ in 1985 in Granville, Ohio, with a 150-4. And Cherokee’s Melissa Lake was 8th in 2012 with a 138-5 in Claremont, Calif., and 8th again in 2013 at 137-6.
Deal is 4-for-4 finishing in the top eight in the javelin, but this year for the first time she also qualified for NCAA Division 3 nationals in the shot put with a lifetime-best and Rowan school-record 45-8 when she won the NJAC meet in Galloway Township earlier this month.
She’s No. 14 seed in the shot and scheduled to throw at 4 p.m. Friday.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 