CORTLAND, N.Y. — The New Jersey City University track & field programs competed at the two-day 2024 Outdoor All-Atlantic Region Track & Field Championships (AARTFC) on Wednesday and Thursday, May 15-16, on the campus of SUNY Cortland.

The highlight of the two-day competition for NJCU was once again senior Ayriana Young (Jersey City, N.J./McNair Academic). The New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) Champion hurdler started off on Wednesday with a sixth-place finish out of 25 runners in the 100-meter hurdles preliminaries, qualifying for the finals with a time of 14.69. Then, on Thursday, she notched a podium finish and tied her personal record with a time of 14.54 to place fifth out of seven finishers — that ties for eighth in program history. Young currently ranks third in the NCAA Division III Metro Region in the 100m hurdles event with that same time and is 31st in all of Division III.

Overall, the women placed in a tie for 38th thanks to Young's podium finish. In addition, junior Reyanna Henderson (Pemberton, N.J./Pemberton Two) competed on Wednesday in the 100-meter and 200-meter dash preliminary races and finished 13th out of 20 and 10th out of 20 with times of 12.76 and 25.88, respectively. Her 200m time was just 0.36 back of qualifying for the finals. Freshman Jezena Aponte (Jersey City, N.J./Snyder) placed 12th out of 18 runners on Thursday in the 1,500-meter race with a time of 4:51.60. That is the second-fastest in program history, just 2.37 behind her own program record of 4:49.23.

On the men's side for the Gothic Knights, the quartet of graduate students Adnan Kpodo (Irvington, N.J./Irvington) and Jaime Tlatelpa (Jersey City, N.J./University Academy Charter), sophomore Pratt Charles (Jersey City, N.J./University Charter) and senior Topu Saha (Jersey City, N.J./William L. Dickinson), combined for a program-record on Thursday in the 4x800-meter relay with a time of 8:26.11, eclipsing the previous record by nearly five seconds. Senior Jason Garcia (Jersey City, N.J./Dickinson) posted a time of 11.21 on Wednesday in the 100m prelims to place 31st out of 44 runners.