Camden Catholic’s Leah Clear ran the 4th-fastest 1,500 in Delaware history Thursday afternoon at the Coastal Athletic Conference Championships.
Clear, a Delaware sophomore from Cherry Hill, ran a lifetime-best 4:26.51 at North Carolina AT&T in Greensboro and placed 6th after qualifying for the final with a 4:33.81 on Wednesday. She closed in 69.74
Tht moves her less than 1 ½ seconds off the all-time South Jersey alumni top-10. West Deptford’s Megan McGlinchey is currently No. 10 at 4:25.21.
Clear had a PR of 4:35.73 as a freshman from a meet in Charlottesville. She lowered it to 4:33.33 in Raleigh in March and then had a huge breakthrough in Princeton two weeks ago with a 4:26.89 before PR’ing again Thursday.
Clear’s high school PR was 5:13.56 for 1,600 meters from the 2023 state Parochial A meet in Somerset. Her race Thursday converts to a 4:46.15 for 1,600 meters, so she’s now 27 ½ seconds faster than she was two years ago.
Of the three Delaware runners ahead of her on the all-time Delaware list, the two most-recent didn’t run this fast as freshmen or sophomores. Mary Schilly ran 4:23.0 in 1980 but there’s no way to figure out what she ran in her first two seasons. So Clear at worst is the fastest freshman or sophomore at Delaware in 45 years.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 