Aliya Garozzo earned 1st-team All-America honors in her final collegiate race Saturday night with a blazing 3rd leg on Duke’s 1,600-meter relay team at the NCAA Championships.
Garozzo split 51.90 an Duke ran a season-best 3:27.40, the 2nd-fastest time in school history, placing 5th among the fastest schools in the country at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore.
Garozzo was a 2nd-team All-America on Penn’s 9th-place 1,600-meter relay team at last year’s indoor NCAA Championships in Boston. She also ran the 3rd leg on that team, which ran 3:31.82 at the TRACK.
Duke’s only faster time was a 3:27.14 when it placed 3rd at the 2023 Penn Relays.
The Blue Devils posted the 7th-fastest time in Thursday’s semifinals but beat two schools – Miami and Iowa – who had faster qualifying times. Georgia won the race in 3:23.62. The women’s 4-by-4 was the final race of the four-day meet.
Only schools with four U.S. citizens in the lineup are eligible for the 2025 U.S. performance list, and Duke qualifies and now has the No. 9 time in the country. The only colleges ahead of Duke on the U.S. list are Arkansas and South Carolina.
Garozzo has the A standard in the 400-meter hurdles for the U.S. Championships on the same track later this summer and is expected to race at nationals, with the first round of the intermediates scheduled for Aug. 1.
She’s ranked 14th in the U.S. and 44th in the world at 55.77. The only faster intermediate hurdler New Jersey has ever produced is world record holder and four-time Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 