Penn Relays Winter Showcase: Swindell breaks county record in 60mH, Bartlett runs US #21 800m
The University of Pennsylvania’s flagship meet is the Penn Relays, one of the largest spring track meets in the world. A few years ago, the Penn Relays branched out and started hosting a series of lower-key summer meets at Franklin Field called the Summer Showcase. Now, with the construction of the Ott Center last year, Penn Relays is taking that tradition indoors with a new Winter Showcase! Lawrenceville, Ewing, WW-P South, and Notre Dame took advantage of this new meet by bringing some athletes to try out the UPenn’s nice new facilities. Full results here.
Boys Results
Lawrenceville’s Michael Bradley and Tolu Olatunji both went under the Lawrenceville’s old 60m school record in the 60m prelims, with Bradley running 7.00 and Olatunji running 7.15. Bradley came back in the finals and ran even faster, going 6.93 for 4th place!
Bradley didn’t get too much rest between the 60m prelims and finals. Instead, he was back on the track for the 200m, blasting a PR of 22.16 to win his heat from the outside lane! That’s a Lawrenceville school record, and it further cements his spot as Mercer County’s top flat sprinter this season. Aldric Crawford (Notre Dame) also doubled back from the 60m prelims to run a great 200m race and set a new PR of 22.81. Bradley and Crawford all ran faster inside the Ott Center than they have ever run for a 200m outdoors. Dasan Jones (Ewing) also joined the indoor PR party with his 23.11. These three boys are now #1-3 in Mercer County this winter for the 200m.
Christopher Young (Notre Dame, Sr.) took 3rd place in the 60mH with a big PR of 8.23. According to World Athletics, that’s roughly equivalent to 7.68 in the 55mH, which is a few hundredths faster than the PR he ran to get 2nd place at the CVC Championships five days earlier. Calvin Kallie (Ewing) ran his first ever 60m hurdles and got 13th in 8.81.
Julius Kinsler (WW-P South) won his 400m heat by over a second and got 8th overall in 50.63. That’s slighly off his season’s best of of 50.21, but it’s still faster than anyone else from Mercer County has run an open 400m this season.
Ayodele Joa-Griffith (Lawrenceville) became the first Mercer County boy to go sub-2 in the open 800m this winter, and he went way under, running 1:56.77 for 7th place. That’s a new indoor PR and very close to his outdoor PR. Arunav Sarkar (Lawrenceville) nearly joined his teammate in the sub-2 club, running 2:01.09 for a big indoor PR in his first open 800m of the season.
Owen Eldridge (Lawrenceville) got 8th place in the 3000m with a time of 8:54.58, which broke the Lawrenceville school record. That’s roughly equivalent to a 9:35 3200m.
Girls Results
Sofia Swindell (Lawrenceville) dominated the 60mH, winning by almost 0.2 with an incredible time of 8.67. To put that time in perspective, it would’ve been top 15 at New Balance Nationals last year, and it’s roughly equivalent to 8.04 in the 55mH, which is a quite a bit under Swindell’s 55mH PR of 8.21. Given her top-end speed and success in the flat sprints, the extra 5 meters of runway in the 60mH is probably to her advantage.
Swindell’s time is also the new Mercer County record! She beat the previous record, set by WW-P North’s Patrycja Dziekonska in 2014, by a mere 0.01. Swindell also broke the Ott Center’s facility record! Sure, this is the fieldhouse’s first season, but “facility record holder” is still a nice distinction — especially since this will be her home track when she’s a freshman at UPenn next winter. Swindell also ran the 200m at this meet, taking 3rd place with a 24.41.
Blair Bartlett (Lawrenceville) continued her streak of producing incredible performances by running a 2:13.30 800m! That’s a massive PR in the open 800m, and it’s #21 in the United States this year! It was amazingly only enough for 3rd place — the top two girls ran the US #2 and US #7 times, making this one of the fastest 800m race in the country this season. Still, going out in 64 with the leaders is probably what carried Bartlett to such an impressive time. Yasmin Willie (Lawrenceville) placed 10th with a 4-second PR of 2:21.58, which is #2 in Mercer County for the open 800m this season.
Lawrenceville’s 400m duo of Jael Gaines (8th in 58.87) and Rhianna Scott (14th in 59.62) both broke 60 with season’s bests. WW-P South also had two girls in the 400m — Adama Turay (19th in 1:00.84) and Claire Dumortier (1:01.67) — who ran right around their season’s bests.
Lexie Koch (Lawrenceville) also had a good meet and came home with two PRs. She ran 7.99 for 13th place in the 60m, followed by a 26.01 for 18th place in the 200m. That 200m time sliced almost a half-second off her prior PR.
Teagan Walker (Ewing) ran a 5:22.95 mile to get 3rd in her heat and 12th overall. She was sitting in 7th in her heat at halfway before making a big push and even taking the lead with just over 200m to go. Although she had to settle for 3rd, her bold running paid off with a new PR — plus she broke a 20-year-old school record! Another Ewing girls to get good experience on the new Ott Center track was Angel Johnson (Ewing), who got top 20 in the 60mH with a time of 9.74.