June Brown put in long hours to reach her ultimate goal.<\/p>\n
After emerging as one of the top middle-distance runners in the Lackawanna Track Conference last spring, the Wallenpaupack senior became a college prospect.<\/p>\n
Last week, Brown fulfilled her long-term goal by committing to St. Joseph\u2019s University, an NCAA Division I track and field program in the Atlantic 10 Conference. She plans to study early childhood education with a focus on special education.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very excited,\u201d Brown said. \u201cSt. Joe\u2019s is an amazing school. Over the summer, I visited and talked to the coaches. I loved the school as soon as I set foot on the campus. It\u2019s a great school for academics, and I have the chance to continue my athletic career. In August, the coach contacted me, and I went on my visit and spent the weekend. The team members were awesome, and it was an amazing experience. I made my decision that I wanted to go there, and the coach offered me, and I made my decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a junior high runner, Brown posted personal records of 2:34.14 in the 800-meter run and 5:58.23 in the 1,600 at the Phil Tochelli Championship meet as a seventh grader. In 2023, she ran a 1:03.89 in the 400.<\/p>\n
She moved up to varsity as a freshman. Her 400 personal record improved to 1:03.16. After seeing little improvement in her sophomore season, Brown trained through the winter.<\/p>\n
Last season, as a junior, Brown had a strong indoor season. She set personal-best times in the 400 (1:07.10), 800 (2:25.30), and 1,600 (5:38.18), setting the stage for a medal-winning spring outdoors.<\/p>\n
Brown won gold in the 800 (2:17.62) at the District 2 Class 3A Championships and the Robert Spagna Championships and Walter Godek Twilight Invitational. She finished 18th in the 800 in 2:16.81.<\/p>\n
In the summer, Brown posted a personal-best time of 2:16.21 at the Henderson Last Chance for Nationals Open Meet.<\/p>\n
She was an All-Region selection in both cross country and track and field.<\/p>\n
Brown, who is again running this fall with the cross country team and finished fourth at the NEPA Invitational at Bloomsburg University.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a while through my freshman and sophomore years, I had a mental block and wasn\u2019t competing well or improving,\u201d Brown, 18, said. \u201cIt looked like I wasn\u2019t going to be able to compete at a collegiate level. I trained my best in my offseason; I just became dedicated to training, and I had a great junior year. My times were dropping almost every meet. I knew that at that moment I was good enough to compete, so I stayed locked in for the last year and a half, and it paid off for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June Brown put in long hours to reach her ultimate goal. After emerging as one of the top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[305,178,180,179,726],"class_list":["post-313206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-high-school-sports","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}