Millrose Trials 2025: Fast Miles and Relays from Lawrenceville
A few local runners made the trip to the Armory this afternoon to compete at the Millrose Trials, where athletes have an opportunity to face top competition while competing for an invitation to the prestigious Millrose Games on February 8th. The high stakes bring out the best races! See full results here.
Girls Mile
Blair Bartlett (Lawrenceville) leads Heat 2 of the girls mile at the Millrose Trials | John Nepolitan for armorytrack.org
The winner of the girls mile at this meet automatically qualifies for the Millrose Games only if she breaks 4:55. In the boys race, which went off before the girls race, the boys went out too slow and no one hit the standard. In the girls race, Lawrenceville’s Blair Bartlett took it upon herself to ensure that the girls would not make the same mistake!
Bartlett took the lead 100m into the race and began pushing hard – her first 409m was 72 seconds, or roughly 4:45 pace. The pace slowed only slightly over the middle laps, and Bartlett continued to lead right up until the bell. She ran a strong last 200m – at 34.9, it was still her fastest lap – but two girls who had been sitting on her for the first 1400m eventually did get by. Bartlett finished in 3rd place in 4:54.15, a new indoor mile PR. In fact, thanks to Bartlett’s pacing, 8 of the top 9 finishers ran indoor mile PRs!
Strictly speaking, Bartlett’s time here was not quite as good as her 4:51.81 1600m at the Poreda Invitational last month. But considering she did almost all the work in this race – as opposed to getting to chase Union Catholic’s Paige Sheppard at Poreda – this was still a phenomenal result. She’ll find out later this month whether she qualified for the Millrose Games. It will be exciting to see what she can do whenever she gets into another race with a larger group of fast girls to race against.
Countney Cane (Peddie) runs in Heat 1 of the girls mile at the Millrose Trials. | John Nepolitan for armorytrack.org
Peddie’s Courtney Cane also had a great race in the other heat of the girls mile! She ran mid-pack for the first 809m (2:31), but once the pace started to lag, she moved up and into the front of the chase pack (which was 5-6 seconds behind 1st place by then). She got passed with 150m to go but then ran a gusty final straightaway to retake 2nd place and finish in 5:04.78. That’s a new indoor PR – and a new Peddie school record! This is one of her first races after missing almost the entire XC season with an injury, and she’s clearly making a great comeback.
Lawrenceville Girls 4x2 and 4x4
The Lawrenceville girls put together amazing relays in the 4x200m and the 4x400m. In both races they were just a split second off the Mercer County records (which also happen to be their school records). To do that in both races just hours apart is very impressive!
The Lawrenceville 4x200m team of Rhianna Scott, Jael Gaines, Lexie Koch, and Sofia Swindel finished third in 1:43.90, just off their county record and school record of 1:43.20 from last year. Swindel had a big split of 24.43 on the anchor leg to carry them from 5th to 3rd. They’ll be waiting to see if they get an invitation to the Millrose Games in the 4x2.
Scott, Gaines, and Swindel came back a few hours later, joined by Yasmin Willie, to get 2nd place in the 4x400m with a time of 3:55.96. That’s #5 in the United States right now! It’s also second-fastest all-time in Mercer County, just .11 behind what the Big Red ran in 2023. Swindel ran an incredible split of 56.00 on the second leg, which was by far the fastest split in the entire race. The girls auto-qualified for the Millrose Games, so they’ll have at least one more crack at that record!
Other Notable Results
The Lawrenceville boys 4x800m team (Arunav Sarkar, Owen Eldridge, Ayodele Joa-Griffith, Amari Akakpo) took over the current county lead with a time of 8:19.02. The junior Joa-Griffith had one of the fastest splits in the entire race, running 1:56.57 on the third leg.
Ninety minutes after the 4x800m, those same four boys came back in the 4x400m and ran 3:33.62, which is also the fastest time in Mercer County this winter. Joa-Griffith once again had a massive second leg and split 49.96! That’s almost two seconds faster than his PR in the open 400m from last spring.
In the 55m, newcomer Michael Bradley, a senior transfer student at Lawrenceville, ran 6.67 to introduce himself as one of the top sprinters in the region. That time is #2 in Mercer County right now. His teammate Tolu Olatunji — who still holds the #1 time in the county — ran a 6.70, just barely behind Bradley this time.