Penn Women Make Dramatic Comeback To Overtake Princeton; Graham Blanks Returns To Break Heps Record In 5,000

By Oliver Hinson for DyeStat

PRINCETON, NJ – When Aliya Gorrozzo charged down the home stretch in the last leg of the women’s 4x400-meter relay, the crowd at Weaver Stadium was the loudest it had been all day. That’s because Gorrozzo, a junior from Penn, had just overtaken Princeton’s Lauren Harris for the lead and the eventual win.

In doing so, she had practically ripped the trophy away from Princeton’s hands on their home turf and single handedly delivered the championship to Penn. 

INTERVIEWS

The red-and-blue won the meet by half a point after a dramatic Day 2 comeback. Final score: 184.5 to 184.

When the day started, Penn was down by nearly 40 points, but a laundry list of impressive performances helped them bridge the gap today. Gorrozzo herself won both the 100-meter hurdles and 400-meter hurdles, while the sprint trio of Fore Abinusawa, Isabella Whittaker and Christiana Nwachuku took home 52 points themselves, including a clean sweep of the 200 meters.

On the distance side, Lily Murphy and Maeve Stiles returned from their 1-2 finish in the 10,000 to finish third and fourth in the 5,000, while Bronwyn Patterson beat Harvard standout Sophia Gorriaran in a close 800 race, winning in 2:04.12. 

In the 3,000-meter steeplechase, senior Olivia Morganti went out on top in her final Heps, winning in 10:00.63.

“We have a historically strong group on the track right now,” head coach Steve Dolan said. “Both in the longer distances and in the sprints and hurdles, we had a really big turnout on the track, and we had timely field event points, which were really needed.”

On the men’s side, Princeton enjoyed a much easier road to victory after building up a substantial lead on Saturday.  They scored 204.5 points – their third-highest point total ever at the meet – and clinched the Heps triple crown: team titles in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track.

Princeton was dominant in every aspect, scoring points in all but one event and earning seven first-place finishes. 

In the sprints, Tigers freshmen led the way: Jackson Clarke won the 100 and 200 with times of 10.40 seconds and 20.88 seconds, respectively, while Xavier Donaldson won the 400 with a meet record time of 46.70 seconds.

“It always feels good to put points up for my team,” Donaldson said. “That’s why we came out, that’s why we do what we do, so I’m really happy to give support for my team.”

The relays also went Princeton’s way. The Tigers won the 4x400 and 4x800, and they took silver in the 4x100.

Samuel Rodman won the 800 with a time of 1:48.40, while Jackson Shorten won a close 3,000-meter steeplechase, kicking in the last 200 to overtake Harvard’s Ferenc Kovacs.

In the 5,000, Princeton was able to put four in the top six, but none of them could top a healthy Graham Blanks. The Harvard junior made his outdoor debut in March after being injured for nearly the entire indoor season; according to him, he’s far ahead of where he expected to be at this point in the season, and he’s ready to be in the upper echelon of collegiate distance runners again.

“(I’m) so, so fired up,” Blanks said. “I’ve been thinking about this race for a long time. I spent a lot of the winter indoors on the bike and stuff, so to get out here again, it just feels great… I’m happy with how this went, happy with where I’m at right now.”

He also said there was a silver lining to his injury. While Northern Arizona's Nico Young and Colin Sahlman took the spotlight, Blanks returned to a more comfortable role as an underdog.

“I prefer it when I’m being counted out a little bit,” Blanks said. “I like to work more in the dark, and I feel like I’ve gotten to, thankfully, have some more of that freedom in the last couple months. Towards the end of cross country, it was a lot of attention, a lot of interviews, and I didn’t really enjoy it that much towards the end, so I’m actually kind of grateful to be a little bit lower on the radar now.”

In June, he said, he hopes to qualify for the U.S. national team in the 5,000. If he does make it to Paris, he will likely be joined by one of his Harvard teammates, NCAA champion and indoor Worlds medalist Maia Ramsden, who pulled off the 1,500-5,000 double, winning the former in a meet record time of 4:09.29.

Ramsden led the race from beginning to end, which was part of her strategy. She didn’t want to leave anything up to chance.

“I didn’t want any chaos,” Ramsden said. “The weather isn’t great, so I wanted to just keep it smooth and figure out a way to get to that line first to help out my team. I wanted to make it fast from the gun.”

The Crimson also scored a good chunk of points in the hurdles. Junior Chloe Fair, fresh off a third-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles at the Penn Relays, took second in the same event at this meet, clocking a personal best time of 56.86 seconds, while junior Izzy Goudros took silver in the 100-meter hurdles in 13.92 seconds.

In the women’s field events, though, it was all Princeton. Sophomores Georgina Scoot and Alexandra Kelley went 1-2 in the triple jump, swapping places from their 1-2 finish in the long jump Saturday. Scoot jumped 13.04 meters (42-9.50), while Kelley was close behind with a jump of 12.94 meters (42-5.50).

Another pair of sophomores, Shea Greene and Nikki Woods, took first and second in the javelin with throws of 48.12 meters (157-10) and 43.27 meters (141-11), respectively.

In the shot put, junior Siniru Iheoma won with a throw of 14.96 meters (49-1), building on the momentum of her second-place finish in the discus throw last night. Iheoma won the shot put in the indoor and outdoor Heps meet in 2022, but she hadn’t won an individual title since then.

Princeton also got points from the heptathlon, as sophomore Julia Jongegeuld scored a personal best 5,265 points. This was Jongegeuld’s first win in either the pentathlon or the heptathlon at a Heps meet.

“It’s really nice that it finally came all together at this meet,” Jongegeuld said.

In the decathlon, Dartmouth teammates Jack Intihar and Karl-Oskar Pajus finished first and second with 5,900 and 5,829 points, respectively.

Meanwhile, one of the most entertaining events of the day was the men’s javelin.

With one throw to go, it looked like a battle between Penn’s Atticus Soehren and Brown’s Edward Webb. Soehren had thrown 62.37 meters (204-7) on his second throw, followed by a throw of 61.70 meters (202-5) by Webb.

In the last round, though, Brown senior Chris White unleashed a mammoth throw of 65.48 meters (214-10) to take the lead. Soehren also saved his best throw for last, but he came up three inches short. 

It turns out, White was throwing with a torn UCL. He was already scheduled for surgery, but he rescheduled it because he didn’t want to miss his last Heps meet.

“I knew it was going to be my last meet of the season,” White said. “I just thought to myself, ‘Four years at Brown University has all come to this moment. What am I gonna do?’ I just went for it.”

White said Heps was a special meet – a common sentiment throughout the day. Even as the rain trickled down in Princeton, it seemed every athlete sensed the importance of this meet, which comes mostly from its history and its emphasis on team success.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Dolan said. “There’s a lot of history with the ‘ancient eight’ getting together, the great Ivy League schools. The athletes do know each other a lot, a lot of them looked at similar schools during the recruiting process. A lot of the coaches and athletes all know each other, so it’s a lot of fun to compete amongst that group of schools.”

For the Princeton today's win was their 22nd in school history. For Penn, it was their seventh all-time and fourth in the last five years.