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QuickTake:
Ellery Lincoln, who just finished her junior year at Lincoln High School, views Hayward Field as her home track.
Ellery Lincoln’s first time running competitively was at a cross-country meet when she was in sixth grade. At first, it seemed like an inauspicious start.
Lincoln was trudging through Oregon’s springtime drizzle and mud. She hadn’t had much preparation, due to the pandemic. And she had to wear a mask while racing.
“I just thought, ‘Oh, great, we probably have this one chance to get her to like this sport, and now she’s going to hate it,’” said her mother, Sarah Schwald, who was herself an elite athlete in her 20s. “She’s going to do a couch-to-3K in Oregon springtime rain and cold while wearing a mask? Could it get any worse?”
Lincoln, however, exceeded expectations.
She started off near the back of the pack, and began to steadily pick people off, Schwald said. When Lincoln and the other runners went into a stand of trees, Schwald lost sight of them. After Lincoln emerged again, near the finish line, she was in second place.
She ended up taking silver in her first cross-country meet.
Fast-forward to the summer before her senior year of high school, and Lincoln hasn’t stopped running. She now holds the fourth-fastest 1,500 meters in U.S. high school history, with her 4:07.06 at the Prefontaine Classic, July 3.
Even though she just finished her junior year at Lincoln High School, she’s committed to the University of Oregon and will race in the World Athletics U20 Championships this week at Hayward Field. The first round of the women’s 1,500 meters is Thursday, Aug. 6 at 6:03 p.m.
Fast genes
Lincoln’s parents both ran track at the University of Arkansas. Her father, Daniel Lincoln, won the steeplechase at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2004, earning him a trip to the Olympics in Athens, and Schwald won the 3,000 meters at the NCAA Indoor Championships in 1995 among many other honors.
But they wanted their daughter to choose running for herself.
“They definitely didn’t want to force me to do it, because they didn’t want to make me hate it,” Lincoln said.
The early signs were there, though.
When Lincoln was a toddler, she never stopped running, her mother said.
“She started walking when she was nine months old,” Schwald said. “From that time onwards, all she did was run.”
Lincoln ran everywhere. She ran across her playground during elementary school, she ran all over the house and essentially anywhere she could if it meant not walking. In middle school, friends were signing up for cross-country after the pandemic, and she figured she’d give it a shot. She said she appreciated both the community aspect of cross-country and track, as well as the competitive outlet that it gave her — which is what got her hooked.
Holding her back
Now, Lincoln runs about 40 miles a week. Her high school coach, Eric Dettman, directs her training.
“From a training perspective, I would say she’s middle to low end of what a high school girl is running, volume-wise,” Dettman said. “We’re not doing anything super-duper intense.”
She runs once a day, six times a week. The goal, Dettman said, is to make sure she can continue to progress at the next level.
“What we do at Lincoln is similar-ish to what they do at Oregon,” Dettman said. “Based on what I’ve seen, she’ll continue to have quite a bit of success at the next level.”
During her junior year, Lincoln won state titles in the Oregon 6A 1,500 meters and cross-country. She was also the women’s Oregon Gatorade Athlete of the Year during the 2025–26 school year for track and field and cross-country.
With those accolades have come extra attention — she has thousands of followers on Instagram and Hayward Field fans already know her.
Lincoln’s mindset about her popularity and attention is to remain calm and collected. She trains hard, and often, but says outside of that, she’s still a high schooler who loves listening to music, thrifting and hitting Taco Bell after a track meet.
“It feels more like they are talking about a piece of artwork I’ve made, not who I am,” Lincoln said. “Running is something I do. It’s not who I am.”
The World Athletics U20 Championships
Growing up, Lincoln was surrounded by running royalty.
“It’s interesting when your family friends are like Olympians,” Lincoln said. “It’s kind of funny looking back. I didn’t know they were that good.”
Jerry Schumacher, head coach for the University of Oregon’s track and field team, coached both Lincoln’s parents during their careers, and famously was the first nonfamily member to hold Lincoln as a baby.
In a year, she’ll be starting to run for Schumacher’s Ducks.
Lincoln says she keeps a relatively flexible prerace routine, except for one must have: Cafe Yumm before every race. Luckily for her, a Cafe Yumm sits less than a block from UO’s campus. Once her time as a Duck begins, chances are she’ll be a regular.
“Sometimes I’ll even eat it for dinner the night before, and then also for lunch the next day,” Lincoln said.
She’ll be hitting it again this week, when she’ll be representing Team USA against some of the top 1,500-meter athletes in the world.
“I think my goal for the U20s is to be in that final,” Lincoln said, “and I think I have done what I need to do to prove that I belong in that final.”
