Ajani Dwyer continued his blazing hot spring with another wind-legal sub-10 at NCAA East Region Prelims this weekend in Lexington, Ky.

Dwyer, a Penn State sophomore from Washington Township, advanced to the NCAA Championships as the 3^rd-fastest qualifier in the East. He ran 9.99 in the regional final – the national quarterfinal – with a 0.1 meters-per-second headwind and will be the 3^rd seed at NCAAs at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., later this month.

Dwyer ran slightly faster in the first round, clocking a 9.98 with a 0.2 headwind. He’s now run sub-10 in three consecutive races and four times in all this spring.

With that 9.98, Dwyer ranks 15^th in the world and 6^th among U.S. men.

Deptford senior Johann Hernandez turned in a historic sprint double this weekend at the state Group 3 meet in Mansfield Township.

Hernandez swept the 100 and 200, winning the 100 in 10.72 with no apparent wind reading taken and then winning the 200 in 21.51 with a 0.0 wind reading.

Hernandez is the first Deptford boy ever to sweep the sprints at the state meet.

He’s the first Spartan to win a state title in the 100 in 51 years, since Bill Williams won the 100-yard dash in 1975 in 9.9 in Piscataway, and the first to win the 200 – or its predecessor – in 58 years, since won the 220 in 21.5 at the 1968 meet, also in Piscataway.

The only other Deptford boy to win two individual events at the state meet was Lathan Brown, who won the 400 and 400-meter hurdles in 2023 at Delsea.

Hernandez PR”d with a 10.51 with a legal 0.8 when he won the South Jersey Group 3 race at Delsea. That’s 3^rd-fastest in Gloucester County history and 9^th-fastest all-time in South Jersey, regardless of wind conditions.

If Hernandez’s MileSplit profile page is correct his only previous 100 or 200 in his high school track career was at sectionals. He didn’t compete at all until the middle of May, which could mean he transferred into Deptford, but I can’t find a record of him competing anywhere else last year.

In any case, that 21.51 is 5^th-fastest on the all-time Gloucester County list, behind Ajani Dwyer [20.86 in 2024] and Todd Dutch [21.40 in 2001] of Washington Township, Kingsway’s Dorian Bryant [21.41 in 2002] and Clayton’s Alexander Osayemi [21.43 last year].

So Dwyer, now ranked 15^th in the world in the 100 at 9.98, is the only Gloucester County sprinter to run faster than Hernandez in both sprints.

Hernandez is seeded 4^th in both the 100 and 200 in the Meet of Champions, scheduled for Wednesday at Pennsauken.

Heading into states, Holy Spirit junior Zaki Marcus’s entire 2026 track season consisted of one meet, and he didn’t compete indoors, which means he had participated in just one track meet in just over 12 months since finishing his sophomore year at Mainland Regional at Group 3 Sectionals.

The layoff sure didn’t hurt him because at Parochial B States this weekend in Galloway Township, Marcus won the long jump with a PR 21-9 ½, took 3^rd behind to Eustace junior Delano Mann and Newark Academy’s Wynston Ditchfield-Agboh in the 100 in 11.09 and was 2^nd to Montclair Kimberly Academy’s Samuel Akaho in the 200 with a 22.07.

In his second meet in a year.

Marcus is the first Holy Spirit boy to place in three events at states since 2019, when Sam Adams was 4^th in the shot put, 5^th in the javelin and 6^th in the discus. His 24 points are the most by a Holy Spirit boy in a state meet since Cade Antonucci scored 26 in 2016, when he won the javelin and was 2^nd in both the shot and disc.

Marcus’s 24 points were good enough to place Holy Spirit 8^th in team scoring.