FLHS Long Jumper Takes 4th at Nationals

Fair Lawn High School senior track star George Alexandris scored a fourth-place finish Friday in the Emerging Elite division of the long jump at the New Balance Indoor Nationals against some of the best high school competitors from across the country.

Alexandris, the school's long jump record holder and first FLHS track athlete to qualify for the Nationals in 15 years, jumped 22 feet, 3/4 inches in the finals Friday afternoon at the Armory to lock up the fourth-place medal.

All of the event's competitors had to have landed a jump of at least 21 feet, 10 inches earlier in the track season to qualify for the Emerging Elite division, which is for top flight high school track athletes who have not quite reached the Championship division qualifying standards. Male long jumpers needed to have jumped at least 22 feet, 9 inches to qualify for this year's Championship division.

Alexandris' longest jump this year, which came in January at the Fairleigh Dickinson Field Festival, registered 22 feet, 7 1/4 inches and placed him in the Emerging Elite division at the Indoor Nationals.

He jumped 22 feet, 3 1/2 inches last week at the Easterns, where he took sixth in a field of the East Coast's 64-best high school long jumpers.

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