Kingsway graduate Tom Cooke placed 24th out of nearly 4,500 runners in the men’s division of the New Balance 5th Avenue Mile Sunday in Manhattan.
The 30-year-old Cooke, now listed with a Blackwood Terrace (Deptford Township) hometown, ran 4:07 along 5th Avenue from 80th Street down to 60th Street. He placed 1st out of 926 runners in the 30-34 age group.
Cooke has a track mile PR of 4:02.16 from a meet at Tatnall School in Wilmington, Del., in April 2022.
Former Shawnee runner Jason Richwall, 26, placed 60th out of 4,491 male finishers (there were 8,807 overall finishers) with a time of 4:27. He was 32nd out of 1,008 in the 25-29 age group. Richwall ran for Muhlenberg College in Allentown, then for Rowan in the spring of 2022, then Muhlenberg again.
The top woman from South Jersey was Brianna Heffernan of Woolwich Township, who placed 95th out of 4,536 women in 5:26. Heffernan, 17, placed 7th out of 135 in the 10-18 age group. Heffernan is a senior at Padua Academy in Wilmington, Del.
Heffernan was a teammate in 2021 and 2022 of Sophia Curtis, the All-America triple jumper and hurdler who spent the last two years at Ocean City.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 