Birnbaum cruises to 1500-meter title as UO men take 5th at NCAA Championships

Simeon Birnbaum’s outdoor season started with a phone call. As it ended, he hung it up.

The sophomore had picked up a phone call from Oregon head coach Jerry Schumacher before his first home race of the season — the Oregon Team Invitational — to hear that he’d be let loose to challenge the collegiate record. He shattered it.

That was April, and just the beginning.

On Friday, on the same track, at the NCAA Track and Field Championships, Oregon’s electric sophomore let the world know as he grabbed his first national 1500-meter title, running 3:36.05.

With one hand pointing skyward at Hayward Field and a glance backward through his sunglasses, he claimed his crown. And as he crossed the finish line, he mimed holding a phone to his ear, then throwing it to the ground.

The best 1500-meter runner in the NCAA didn’t challenge for the lead after one lap — or two. He didn’t want to “burn any matches” before the 800-meter mark.

Then, before the bell, Birnbaum swung wide to erase the field’s lead and slide in behind Washington senior Reuben Reina. Then on the back stretch, Birnbaum stepped on the gas and the Husky drifted away.

It was just before the tower, 200 meters from the finish line, when Birnbaum dropped his hammer on the field. The expanse widened from there as he glanced up at the video board, then saw the crowd rise.

Birnbaum’s final 400 meters, 52.08-seconds, had been too much for anyone to keep up.

“That last lap was a dream,” Birnbaum said. “I felt incredible that entire race.”

He said he’s been “dreaming of this moment for a while now,” but last night, those fantasies were interrupted. After a top-overall qualifying race Wednesday prompted Birnbaum to call his shot in the final, he said he “barely slept” Thursday night. That, of course, meant a restless seven or eight nervy hours for a 20-year-old who says he likes to shoot for 10 hours per night. 

“There’s not really doubts, but you know you can lose,” Birnbaum said. “You know it can happen — stuff can happen — and I wanted it really bad.”

Dreams became reality as he rounded the bend Friday evening. When he glanced up at the screen with 150 meters to go and couldn’t see the chase pack, he said, “I knew in that moment that I had it won.”

Oregon scored 40 points and finished fifth in the team race, with Birnbaum’s title UO’s only individual win of the day, as the Ducks’ men wrapped up their season.

On the women’s side, Liisa-Maria Lusti finished the first day of the heptathlon in eighth place, and she and the rest of the Oregon women return to Hayward Field tomorrow to decide the team title.

Cook, Palfrey round out Ducks’ 1500-meter finalists

Two years ago, Elliott Cook kicked down the home stretch of the 1500-meter final at Hayward Field. He nearly outpaced the field, but his 3:39.57 wasn’t enough to silence Washington’s Joe Waskom, who slid past Cook to claim the title.

That version of himself was constantly nervous, Cook remembers. “The nerves are still there today, but it doesn’t feel like a world-ending event,” he said Friday, as he returned to the starting line of the NCAA final.

An Oregon runner was the favorite this time, but his name was Birnbaum. Cook, now a sixth-year senior, ran two regular-season outdoor races before the Big Ten Championships this year after working back from an injury that cost him his 2025 outdoor campaign. 

At Hayward, his 3:37.80 was good enough for sixth place. The rattling sound of his stress has quieted over the past two years. The stretch between those two finals was “probably the longest chapter of my life,” Cook said.

“Honestly, even getting into the national meet this year — I felt like it was a really tall task,” Cook said. “So, to be able to pull out a sixth place finish is pretty huge.”

He wanted to be higher up, of course. He had to jump into the fifth lane down the home stretch to make his kick count. He bemoaned a chance to complain about his fitness as a “boring excuse.” But this year had different stakes than 2024, and he crossed the line with a race which he figured was about as good as he could’ve hoped for.

Tomas Palfrey, who paced Birnbaum to his collegiate-record race in April before securing his spot in Friday’s final with a 3:40.23 in the prelim, finished ninth in 3:38.67.

Balazs seals steeplechase points

To stoke the fire that fuels him, Benjamin Balazs rewatches his best moments. Last night, before Friday’s 3,000-meter steeplechase final, the Oregon junior pulled up video of the 1500-meter race he won at Oregon Twilight in May, and then his Bill Dellinger Invitational win from October.

The back-to-back Big Ten Outdoor champion in the event was seventh at last year’s NCAA meet. With another year of races added to his personal video library, he shaved over a second and two places off that nationals finish to secure a fifth-place medal in 8:23.03.

Betts nets crucial points with final jump

When Tre Betts told his friends as a high schooler that he was going to be at Oregon, he was a running back. The three-star was a football athlete with a path in his future which would lead through junior college. He got a track coach for the first time two years ago and transferred to Oregon from Pittsburg State before the 2026 season.

When the three-time Division II triple jump champion needed a big mark to snag crucial points for the Ducks in his first NCAA Division I Championship meet, he just told himself to “jump further.”

He did. A 16.56-meter sixth attempt jumped him up the standings and bagged Oregon 4 points in a neck-and-neck team race.

Tewalt, Birnbaum represent UO in 5k

Luke Tewalt’s 16th-place finish was the Ducks’ best in the 5,000-meters. A senior, Tewalt transferred to Oregon from Wake Forest, where he placed fourth in the 2023 5,000-meter NCAA outdoor final, and won the Big Ten outdoor 10,000-meter title in May. He crossed the line in 14:01.28 and didn’t score points for the Ducks.

A tired Birnbaum, who said he had to convince Schumacher to let him even attempt the double, peeled off the pack with four laps to go, registered a DNF and headed up the tunnel.

He’ll turn his attention to the Prefontaine Classic, where he’s scheduled to run in the prestigious Bowerman Mile against Oregon legend Cole Hocker.

Smith caps championship weekend with discus

Ben Smith, who won the Ducks’ first men’s shot put title in 44 years on Wednesday, sank in a star-studded discus field Friday. He entered the day with a 58.99-meter personal-best mark from the NCAA First Round, but in a field where 60 meters was the bar, the freshman didn’t approach it with two valid marks, the best of which came at 56.17 meters — good for 21st place in the 24-athlete field.

Other notes

• Tennessee won a 4×100-meter final in which only five of nine teams finished the race. Oregon couldn’t connect on its final exchange, while newly minted collegiate record holder Auburn dropped its baton
• The Tigers’ Kanyinsola Ajayi won a windy 100-meter race in 9.72 (w +2.2); LSU’s Jaiden Reid finished second in 9.82 and won the 200-meter in a collegiate-record 19.63.
• Arkansas won the team race with 56 points, ahead of second-place Georgia (49) and third-place Tennessee (46).