NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Closing in on the 16-foot mark, Ryan Herrera-Murphy ’16 vaulted a personal-best 15 feet, 9 inches to win the 121st Penn Relays Championship on April 25. The senior’s first-place finish marked the second time in school history that an Iona Prep Gael has won an individual event at the Penn Relays.
Herrera-Murphy’s vault was the eighth-best in Penn Relays history and second individual event win for Iona Prep since Vince Draddy’s legendary 4-minute, 13.3-second mile run in the 1979 Millrose Games, the same year as his graduation. Draddy would go on to run a sub-4-minute mile the same weekend as the Millrose Games just three years later with the University of Virginia during an invitational at Boston University.
Herrera-Murphy’s fellow “Elite Eight” counterpart Matt Fay ’15 finished sixth with a vault of 14 feet, 9 inches. For 27-year vaulting coach Jerry Cahill, who was inducted into the Iona Preparatory School K-12 Hall of Fame on April 21, it was especially gratifying to have two Gaels among the top seven.
