Moorestown senior Hannah Byrd-Leitner won her 4th consecutive state pole vault title Friday and broke her own meet record at the Group 3 championships at South Plainfield.
Byrd-Leitner cleared 12-8 – sorry, no field series info available, thanks NJSIAA! – and broke the meet record of 12-7 that she set at last year’s meet at Delsea.
Byrd-Leitner has won state titles indoors [12-0] and outdoors [12-7] in 2024 and indoors [13-0] and outdoors [12-8] this year.
Because the NJSIAA doesn’t care at all about track and hires timing companies for state championship meets that don’t bother with splits or field series information, we don’t know where Byrd-Leitner entered the competition or where she had the bar raised after clearing 12-8. Unbelievable.
Anyway, Byrd-Leitner is the first Moorestown girl to repeat as a state champion in any event since Amandi Rhett won the 100 three straight years from 1998 through 2000 and the 200 in 1999 and 2000 (in Group 2 in 1998 and 1999 and Group 3 in 2000).
Byrd-Leitner’s 12-8 is the best clearance at states in any public school group. She shared the overall public school record of 12-7 with Emma Keating of Pompton Lakes, who won Group 2 in 2023.
Hayley Horvath of Notre Dame set the overall state meet record of 13-0 when she won the 2018 Parochial A meet in Somerset.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 