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QuickTake:
Ducks senior Aaliyah McCormick defended her hurdles crown a year after becoming the first Oregon woman to win the event. As a team the Ducks women finished fourth on the final day of the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships.
Aaliyah McCormick, dominant again, draped herself in green.
The senior commanded the NCAA 100-meter hurdles final a year ago at Hayward Field, returned and ruled it again Sunday with a 12.47-second win. Wreathed eternally in green and now twice in gold, she’s not shy about why she chooses to do it at Oregon.
After throwing her arms wide to hug her city on the finish line, she took an Oregon flag and wrapped it around her shoulders. McCormick, her legacy now even heavier with history, has defined hurdles in Eugene.
“There are so many things on the horizon, and this is like the cherry on top,” McCormick said. “I can’t even express to you how happy and blissful I am. This was the perfect circumstance.”
After taking the outdoor title in 2025, she set the UO record at the NCAA First Round two weeks ago and ran just over that time with a tailwind in the national final.
“I just tell myself that there are people coming for me,” McCormick said. “That’s definitely a starter for me — ‘Oh, people want to beat me.’”
In the final, there was a challenger. Kentucky’s Emmi Scales sat on McCormick’s hip through every hurdle and after the last one was in step with the champion. That step, though, was unstable and Scales tumbled into the lane to her right as McCormick soared ahead on her left.
With Scales on the ground and eventually disqualified, no runner came within 0.31 seconds of first place.
After winning that NCAA outdoor title last year — the first in UO women’s history — McCormick talked about how she was “in love with Oregon.”
In 2026, she marched around the country to tell the NCAA all about it with wins at the Big Ten indoor, then the NCAA indoor, then the Big Ten outdoor. She led qualifiers with her 12.44-second record-setting time at the First Round qualifier in Fayetteville, Arkansas, led qualifiers again Thursday at Hayward Field and never faltered as she raced down the home stretch, still in love.
Her year didn’t approach the injury-free perfection which facilitated last year’s victory. When her arms splayed across the finish line, they embraced a year in which she said she didn’t run “fully” until the championship season and dealt with both on and off-the-track trials. Some of her injuries came “out of nowhere.”
“I was like, ‘I don’t understand,’” McCormick said. “I kind of had to start all over, which is why I wasn’t present in the beginning. It was a little bit scary. It wasn’t comforting, because I wanted to be here in these moments.”
A year ago, she became the first Duck to win the event. Now she’s the only one to win it twice. McCormick didn’t share details Sunday about her future plans, teasing that “you’ll have to wait and see.” But her name is plastered across the Oregon record books, and it’s not going anywhere.
Ducks collect 9 points in 1500 meters
Oregon’s Wilma Nielsen said she didn’t want to lead the 1500-meter field out, especially down a Hayward Field back stretch which became a wind tunnel as it whipped around the two-time reigning NCAA indoor mile champion.
The Swede won the NCAA indoor title again after returning to UO for her final season of eligibility, but she added another year and another master’s degree to facilitate her shot at a first outdoor title. Given that chance, she trailed the favorite, Washington State’s Rosemary Longisa, throughout, and couldn’t kick into gear fast enough around the final curve to pay off the year of training.
“I didn’t really have the kick that I usually have, which was sad,” Nielsen said. “So in the last 100 meters, I can see all of them flying away from me. Obviously, I’m not happy with fourth. I wanted to win today.”
Oregon qualified three runners into the outdoor final for the second-consecutive year. Nielsen anchored a nine-point haul for the Ducks behind Big Ten outdoor champion Juliet Cherubet in fourth and ahead of ninth-place Silan Ayyildiz.
Where Nielsen faded after attempting her kick with 200 meters to go, Cherubet thrust herself into the fray down the home straight, closing in 59.59 before collapsing to the track with her arms folded below her head. Nielsen came and picked her up.
“She thought I was feeling tired,” Cherubet said. “I was hungry for the medal.”
Cherubet 11th in 5,000-meter
Cherubet returned to the track in the 5,000-meter final, where she battled a field which included Alabama star Doris Lemngole and freshman BYU phenom Jane Hedengren.
Few can hang with Lemngole on her day, and even among the evening heat, Cherubet wasn’t one of them and finished in 11th place with a joint-personal-best 15:25.41. Lemngole was eventually disqualified due to stepping over the rail, and New Mexico sophomore Marion Jepngetich won in 15:13.01.
“I’m still grateful for what I did today, even if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted,” Cherubet said. “I feel like I still had much more in me.”
Khunou, Bovele Linaka start UO scoring in discus
In the discus, Alicia Khunou and Marie Josée Bovele Linaka, both in their first seasons at UO, became the first two Oregon women to finish together in the top eight of an NCAA meet Saturday.
Khunou, a freshman, secured her fourth-place — and a UO fifth-best all-time spot with a third-round personal-best throw of 57.44 meters while Bovele Linaka’s first mark, 56.65 meters, was her best and good enough for seventh place.
“We’re pretty close teammates,” Khunou said. “I think that’s important, because being close encourages us to push each other.”
Khunou finished last in Thursday’s shot put — an event in which she was focused on potential PRs. An attempt to “reset and refocus” involved two calls to her parents — both before heading to the call room Saturday and after her third-round personal best — and lots of self-talk before an event which she framed mentally as a chance to “just throw what got you here, and whatever happens happens.”
The reward she reaped was a surprise, she said, but a welcome one.
“I felt it come out of my hand, and I knew it was going to go far,” Khunou said. “But I didn’t think it was going to be a PR, you know? I was pretty shocked when I saw on the big screen how far it was.”
Florida junior Alida Van Daalen won the event with a meet-record 65.98 meter throw.
Davronova second in triple jump; Atkins out with no mark
Sharifa Davronova debuted for the Ducks just weeks ago in the triple jump at the Big Ten championship. Since then, she’s won the Big Ten outdoor title, led qualifying at the First Round and finished second behind a new collegiate-leading mark Sunday.
At Hayward Field, Davronova logged a 14.13-meter jump on her second attempt and sat in second place behind Clemson’s Shantae Foreman for the next three rounds. On her sixth jump, among a 2.3 meter-per-second tailwind, she seized the lead with a 14.15-meter effort but saw that mark surpassed by Foreman’s collegiate-leading 14.24-meter winner.
Atkins fouled on her first jump, fouled again and retired due to injury, per Oregon communications staff, after her second.
DNF in the heptathlon
Heptathlete Liisa-Maria Lusti did not finish competition Saturday after starting the day in eighth place, but faded after placing 24th in the long jump and 16th in the javelin. She did not start the 800-meter final and registered a DNF for the competition.
Other notes
- Georgia won the women’s team title with 59 points ahead of Florida (43) and Arkansas (38)
- Georgia senior Dejanea Oakley ran a collegiate-record 48.79-second time in the 400-meter final
- Arkansas senior Sanu Jallow won the 800-meter final in a collegiate-record 1:56.85
- Georgia freshman Adaejah Hodge ran a collegiate-record 21.68 in the 200-meter final
- South Carolina junior Akala Garrett ran a collegiate-leading 53.32 in the 400-meter hurdles final
- Arkansas ran a collegiate-leading 3:18.88 in the 4×400-meter final
- USC ran a collegiate-leading 41.58-second time in the 4×100-meter final
