Pleasantville’s Gabriel Moronta, a senior at South Florida, won the 400 at the American Conference Championships Saturday in a speedy 46.24.

Moronta led all qualifiers in Friday’s trials with a 46.91 at Birmingham CrossPlex in Alabama before running away from the field in the final.

Moronta just ran an indoor PR and school-record 46.04 earlier this month in a meet in Boston. That’s No. 22 in NCAA Division 1. His outdoor PR is a school-record 45.81 from last year’s American Conference meet in San Antonio.

Moronta also has PRs of 1:49.33 for 800 meters and 51.38 in the intermediates, both while he was competing for Mississippi State.

South Florida is the top seed in the 4-by-4 later Saturday with its school-record 3:07.59 in Boston earlier this month. Moronta is listed as the second leg.

Lumberton’s Greg Foster won his 4th Heps long jump title Saturday afternoon and had the three-best jumps of the competition at the Ivy League Heptagonal Champiuonships at Cornell’s legendary Barton Hall in Ithaca, N.Y.

Foster, a junior at Princeton, had. 24-6 ½ on his 1st jump, a 24-5 ½ on his 3rd and a 24-10 ½ on his 5th. He fouled every even-numbered attempt.

Foster is competing this winter for the first time since last winter after undergoing foot surgery after last year’s indoor season.

Foster didn’t triple jump this weekend at Heps but he did race in the 60-meter hurdles trials immediately after concluding the long jump and recorded a large-Q qualifier for Sunday’s final with a 7.97. His PR is 7.89, which he’s hit three times.

Barton Hall was the site of one of the most highly regarded Grateful Dead concerts ever on May 8, 1977. To listen click here.

Sterling graduate Jenovia Logan recorded the 2nd-best high jump clearance in Rutgers history Saturday and the 4th-best ever by a South Jersey high school graduate at the Big Ten Championships in Indianapolis.

Logan, who had a high school PR of 5-6 ½, cleared 5-10 ¾ on her 3rd attempt, extending her PR from 5-10 from a meet at the Armory in December.

She trails only Courteney Campbell in Rutgers history. Campbell cvleared 5-11 ½ at the 2022 Rutgers Open at the Armory. Rhonda Rogombe also cleared 5-10 ¾ in a meet in Piscataway in January of 2016.

In South Jersey history, the only jumpers to go higher are Paul VI graduate Priscilla Frederick [6-3 in Toronto in 2015], Holy Cross graduate MaryBeth Labosky [6-1 ½ in Lawrence, Kans., in 1992] and Willingboro graduate Kenady Wilson [6-0 ¾ in Greensboro in 2022].

Logan cleared 5-5 ¾ on her 1st attempt, 5-7 ¾ on her 3rd, 5-9 ¾ on her 2nd and 5-10 ¾ on her 3rd. She took three shots at 6-0.

 

The NJSIAA continues to put out meet programs that are embarrassing in the number of errors that are in there every year and are never fixed.

I wanted to see how quickly I could find 10 mistakes in the boys Meet of Champions program, and it was eight minutes.

The boys program is here and it actually covers state relays, sectionals, states and the Meet of Champions. The girls program is here. But I focused only on the boys program and only on the Meet of Champions section.

If I had  the time I’m sure I could have found a combined 100 errors in the two programs. I stuck to one small section and found 10 without even trying:

1) In the list of winners, 1973 60-yard dash winner John Chambers of Neptune is listed as “John Champers.”

2) The program never indicates that the 55 was a 60 from 1969 through 1979.

3) The 2016 55 winner fron South Plainfield, Marteese Jones, is listed as “Martees Jones.”

4) The list of 400 winners starts with 1989. Where are the 1969 through 1988 winners? I eventually found them under the 200-meter dash list. Which goes from 400 winners to 200 winners in the middle.

5)  The 2000 400 winner, Lenape’s Mohamad Kanu, has his last name spelled “Kann.”

6) The 2015 800 winner Hazem Miawad is listed as “Miawad Hazem.”

7) The 2007 1,600 winner Dennie Waite of Red Bank is listed as “Dennie Wait.”

8) The 1986 hurdles winner, Hackensack’s Jerome Pemberton, is listed as “Jerry Pemberton.” That’s not his name. Nobody ever called him Jerry. He was Jerome.

9) Neptune’s 1978 high jump winner, Dennis Marshall, is listed as “Donis.” Donis? Really? That’s two Neptune errors. What does the NJSIAA have against Neptune?

10) The 2019 pole vault winner Liam Landau of Pascack Hills is listed as “Liam Landua.”

Eight minutes.