From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank

Paul VI’s Alyssa Garozzo ran the 9th-fastest intermediate hurdles time in NCAA Division 1 Saturday in her second 400IH race since transferring to Duke.

Garozzo, a Duke senior, ran 56.54 at the Jim Click Shootout in Tucson, the 3rd-fastest time in Duke history and only 20-100ths off her lifetime-best 56.34, which she ran in May as a junior at Penn at Heps in Princeton. That stands as the University of Pennsylvania school record.

Lauren Hoffman, who represented the Phillipines in the 2024 Olympics in Paris, set the Duke record of 55.47 in the prelims of the 2022 NCAA Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene. She went on to place 3rd in the final in 55.58. No. 2 on the all-time Duke list is Skyla Wilson, who ran 56.05 when she won last year’s ACC Championships in Atlanta. Wilson and Garozzo were teammates at Penn in 2021 and 2022. In fact, it was Wilson’s Penn school record that Garozzo first broke last March with a 57.97 in Gainesville.

The only New Jersey women to run faster than Garozzo are world record holder and Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin of Union Catholic [50.37 in Paris in 2024], Tonya Lee of Rancocas Valley [55.78 in Walnut, Calif., in 1996] and Winslow Township’s Krystal Cantey [56.21 in Gainesville in 2007].

Garozzo ran 57.16 in Raleigh a week earlier in her first race for Duke. She also PR’d in the flast 400 this spring with a 52.54, which is No. 16 in NCAA Division 1 and 6th-fastest all-time by a South Jersey quarter-miler.