Penn Relays 2025 Recap: Day 2
It was another beautiful day for fast races on Day 2 of the Penn Relays! Today was the girls’ turn to show off in front of the crowd. Most Mercer County schools were in sprint mode with the 4x100m relays, but those races were sandwiched between speculator displays of distance running by Lawrenceville and WWP North.
Check out some highlights from today’s races. Also check out the Day 1 highlights and a preview of tomorrow’s races.
Girls 4x800m
Lawrenceville started off the day with a school record of 9:22.35 in the 4x800m! That time is also NJ #4 this year. Sprinter Jael Gaines led off with a 2:25 leg, Yasmin Willie and Rory Laubach both split 2:21 on the middle legs, and then Blair Bartlett picked off five teams en route to a 2:13.65 anchor leg. They finished 4th in their heat and 16th out of 78 teams total. Although they just missed making the final, they’ll be back – Willie is a freshman, Laubach and Bartlett are both sophomores, and Gaines is a junior, so we should continue seeing great 4x800m for years to come. Also, that was a great run by the versatile Gaines, who sprinted in the 4x100m just a couple hours later and is scheduled to complete the rare 4x1/4x4/4x8 triple over the next two days.
Girls 4x100m
Lawrenceville got its second school record of the day when their 4x100m girls scorched a 47.89 to place 28th out of 560 teams! With that impressive performance, Blake Hatwood, Rhianna Scott, Jael Gaines, and Sofia Swindell became the first Mercer County foursome to go under 48 seconds since the Trenton girls from the 1980s. Their time was so fast that they’ll get a chance to do it again – they qualified for the Northeast Championship tomorrow afternoon!
A couple of CVC schools also had red hot races to go sub-50 for the first time this season. WWP South (Adama Turay, Logan Mills, Claire Dumortier, and Anastasia Kudin) led that group with a time of 49.64, which is the second-fastest that any Pirates team has run in at least the last 15 years. (Check out this nice article about the WWP South sprinters by the Trentonian’s Kyle Franko: Penn Relays: West Windsor-Plainsboro South girls post top 4×100 time among CVC schools.) Not far behind them was Allentown (Isabelle Andre, Naila Nelson, Amanda Hoglund, Martha Olorunnisola), whose 49.84 marked just the second time that the Redbirds have ever gone sub-50.
Other CVC schools to dip under 51 for the first time this season included Ewing (50.11), Lawrence (50.34), Princeton (50.52), and Hopewell Valley (50.78).
Girls DMR
WWP North girls shattered their school record with a huge performance in the girls DMR Championship of America, where they ran 12:01.85 to take 10th place. Zui Chinchalkar opened with a 3:41.83 for 1200m, Brie Davis-Owens sprinted her lap in a quick 59.78, Sara Secora split a 2:22.21 on the 800m leg, and then Allison Lee caught several teams on the anchor leg thanks to a massive 4:58.04 1600m split. Their overall time took 17 seconds off their school record and moved them to #2 all-time in Mercer County.
Girls 3000m
Lawrenceville’s Blair Bartlett etched her name in Penn Relays history after she won the girls 3000m championship in a mindblowing 9:13.60! That time is absolutely stunning! To put it in perspective, consider these facts:
She broke the Penn Relays record of 9:15.3, which had stood for 40 years. For that achievement, she was named the Penn Relay’s individual girl athlete of the meet.
She broke the state record of 9:15.25 set by phenom Angelina Perez in 2022.
She’s now US #10 all-time in the 3000m, just a couple of seconds behind household names like Katelyn Tuohy.
Her time converts to a 3200m of roughly 9:54, which would be #2 all-time in New Jersey behind Perez’s 9:53.
She won this race by sticking to and then outkicking Niwot’s Addison Ritzenhein, a superstar from Colorado who won this race last year, placed 5th at Nike Cross Nationals in the fall, and won the 2 Mile championship (in 10:00.11) at Nike Indoor Nationals last month.
Bartlett closed her last lap in a blistering 68 seconds. That’s pretty great even for the last lap of a 800m – and she did it here after having run 6 ½ straight laps at an average of 74 seconds.
This was Bartlett’s second race of the day, several hours after running a 2:13 to anchor her teammates to a 4x800m school record.
However you look at it, this was certainly one of the greatest performances ever by a Mercer County distance girl. Now this local star is beginning to turn heads all across the country!
(Read more about Bartlett’s amazing race in articles by the Trentonian’s Kyle Franko, Lawrenceville Prep’s Blair Bartlett breaks 40-year Penn Relays record in spectacular 3000 meter performance, and by NJ.com’s Ryan Patti, N.J. prep school star smokes 45-year meet record in epic Penn Relays girls 3,000 upset.)