Jaidah Garrett is off to a fast start to her freshman year at UConn, with a triple jump PR and near-PR in the long jump in her first outdoor meet.
Garrett, from Absegami, jumped 19-3 ½ and 39-7 ¼ in the Huskies’ season opener in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Indoors, she jumped 19-5 ½ in a meet in Cambridge, Mass., and only triple jumped twice, with a season best of 37-2 ¼ at the Big East Championships in Chicago. She placed 4th in the long jump [19-3 ½] and 7th in the triple at the conference meet as a freshman.
In high school, Garrett had PRs of 19-7 ¾ at West Philly Nationals at Franklin Field this past June with a legal 0.6 meters-per-second wind. Her high school triple jump PR was 38-6 at Delsea in May. No wind guage for that meet. Her three-best high school marks were made in meets without a wind guage. Her best wind-legal triple at Absegami was a 37-9 ½ at the state Group 3 meet at Delsea with a 1.8 wind reading.
So her 39-7 ¼ in Myrtle Beach was officially a nearly two-foot PR. The wind was 1.1 on that jump and minus-1.6 on her 19-3 ½.
Garrett is now 4th-best in the Big East in the triple jump this year and 3rd in the long jump. The 39-7 ¼ is 10th-best on the all-time South Jersey alumni list and No. 2 among Abegami graduates. Mariah Hubbard of Monmouth, a four-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion, jumped 40-5 at the 2019 ECAC Championships at Boston University.
Unfortunately, UConn is one of the few Division 1 schools that doesn’t have an all-time top-10 performance list on its web site. That’s lame, UConn, get your act together!
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 