Oregon’s McCormick takes hurdles title; Georgia wins NCAA women’s team title

Never miss a headline! Sign up to get the latest Lane County news delivered straight to your inbox every weekday for free.

• Morning Lookout
• Lookout PM
• News Alerts

Sign up

She might as well have been running in a tunnel.

“I walked in here with a lot of confidence,” Oregon’s 100-meter hurdler Aaliyah McCormick said. “So calm, so still, and I stayed in my lane no matter what was around me.”

What was around her was the top semifinalist, UCLA’s Yanla Ndjip-Nyemeck, crashing into the first hurdle and falling and not finishing in Lane 5, immediately on McCormick’s left, leaving two open lanes on her left since another favorite, Florida’s Habiba Harris in Lane 4, walked off the track before the race began.

With that, the young woman now known as the nation’s best, flew down the track and took the title in a time of 12.81 seconds on the final day of competition at the 2025 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in front of a crowd of 9,315 at Hayward Field.

“Oh my gosh, it means so much to me,” said McCormick, the junior from San Diego. I don’t have any words. I really don’t. The crowd, the people, my teammates. I’m just in awe.”

This was her first full season without some sort of injury, McCormick said, making a national title all the more rewarding. 

And she wasn’t distracted at all by Ndjip-Nyemeck’s fall at the start or the big gap in the track created by two open lanes.

“No,” she said. “Hurdles can be a very difficult race. You’re running and jumping at the same time. That can be a little bit of an obstacle, so I knew not to worry about anything else that was going on around me but to just stay composed in my lane and that is definitely a component of staying calm.”

McCormick’s win, the first national title ever for a Duck in the 100 hurdles, gave the Oregon women 10 of their 23 points as the Ducks finished tied for 10^th with Texas.

Georgia took the team title with a stunning 73 points, capped by a win in the meet’s final event, the 4×400 relay. It was the first-ever national championship in women’s track and field for the Bulldogs, who entered Saturday with a meet-leading 26 points already on the board from Thursday.

For Oregon’s 1500 trio of Silan Ayyildiz, Klaudia Kazimierska and Mia Barnett, there were mostly thoughts of what might have been.

“I feel like it was such a bad race for me,” said a distraught Kazimierska, the Olympian from Poland, who finished fifth in four minutes and 10.42 seconds after finishing third in the same race last year in Eugene.

“I wasn’t patient enough,” she said. “I just didn’t run by best today. It was my last race at Hayward, so I’m just very emotional.”

Just ahead of Kazimierska was another UO junior, Silan Ayyildiz, the Turk and collegiate record holder in the mile, who finished in fourth in 4:09.75.

“I was just, you know, it’s tactical,” Ayyildiz said. “When it goes tactical, you just have to fight. But, I mean, all three of us there to show up … I’m glad I’m representing my school and I’m healthy.”

Senior Mia Barnett finished last in the race, in 12^th, in 4:13.43.

Washington’s 6-foot-1 Sophie O’Sullivan won the race in 4:07.94, leading mostly from start to finish and pulling away with a gutsy kick in the final 100 meters, a complete one-year redemption after finishing last in the 2024 NCAA’s in Eugene.

“I just really thought someone was going to close on me there, so I was probably running a bit scared and just running as fast as I could,” said the Australian-born Irish athlete who competed for Ireland in the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Oregon’s Ryann Porter took eighth in the triple jump to score a point for the Ducks with a mark of 43 feet, 4.5 inches.

Annika Williams, unable to run the heptathlon’s final event, the 800, did not finish for the Ducks.

O’Sullivan’s win in the 1500 gave the Huskies a momentary one-point lead over Georgia, but the Bulldogs proved unbeatable on Saturday, surging into the lead when 2024 U.S. Olympian Aaliyah Butler won the 400 in 49.26 and teammate DeJanea Oakley finished right behind her in 49.65 to give Georgia 18 more points.

The Bulldogs got another 10 points when Elena Kulichenko won the high jump by being the only athlete to clear 6 feet, 5 inches; three points from Skylynn Townsend’s sixth place finish in the triple; six points from freshman Michelle Smith’s third-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles; and that final 10 points when Butler, a member of America’s gold-medal-winning 4×400 relay team in Paris last summer passed Arkansas in the final 100 meters, recording a sizzling 48.8 final-lap time.

“It was an amazing performance,” said Georgia’s director of men’s and women’s track and field, Caryl Smith Gilbert, who led the University of Southern California’s women’s track and field program to outdoor national titles in 2018 and 2021, talking to ESPN’s John Anderson on the field during the trophy presentation. 

“We had a goal last night to get between 35 and 40 points today. Our field events came through, running events came through. We’ve been working for this moment the whole season.”

USC finished second Saturday with 47 points.

Other outstanding performances Saturday belonged to a couple of athletes who set collegiate records, including Alabama sophomore Doris Lemngole, who finished the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 8:58.15, a year after winning the event in 2024 as a freshman in 9:15.24

Michigan’s Savannah Sutherland broke the seven-year-old collegiate record of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (Kentucky), now the world record-holder and two-time Olympic gold medalist, in the 400-meter hurdles by running 52.46 after taking, and keeping, a huge lead over the rest of the field.

NCAA meet records went to Stanford’s Roisin Willis, who ran the 800 in 1:58.13. Willis passed LSU’s Michaela Rose, who held the meet record for just two days after running 1:58.95 on Thursday.

Rose led the race until the last 300 meters and finished fourth in 1:59.47.

Another meet record went to Fresno State’s Cierra Jackson, of Fresno State, who became the school’s first-ever female athlete to win an NCAA title in any event with a throw of 215 feet, 11 inches in the discus.

Jackson was moved to tears when interviewed in front of the crowd and took a delightful lap around the track, appearing somewhat taken aback by the adoration of the Hayward crowd.

New Mexico’s freshman phenom Pamela Kosgei completed an NCAA double by winning the 5,000 meters in 15:33.96, two days after setting a meet record in the 10,000.

South Carolina’s JaMeesia Ford, perhaps the easiest athlete to spot all week with her flowing long garnet-colored hair, put 18 points on the board for the Gamecocks with a 200-meter win in 22.21 (just two days after becoming only the fifth collegian woman to go under 22 seconds in the semifinals) and a second-place finish in the 100.

Individual champions crowned Saturday:

• Heptathlon: Pippi Lotta Enok, Oklahoma, 6,285 points
• Discus: Cierra Jackson, Fresno St., 215 feet, 11 inches, meet record
• High jump: Elena Kulichenko, Georgia, 6 feet, 5 inches.
• Women’s Collegiate Wheelchair 100: Hannah Dederick, Illinois, 16.5 
• 4×100 relay: Southern Cal,  42.22 
• Triple jump: Winny Bii, Texas A&M, 45 feet, 9.75 inches
• 1500: Sophie O’Sullivan, Washington, 4:07.94 
• 3,000 steeplechase: Doris Lemngole, Alabama, 8:58.15, meet record
• 100 hurdles: Aaliyah McCormick, Oregon, 12.81
• 100: Samirah Moody, USC, 11.13
• 400: Aaliyah Butler, Georgia, 49.26
• 800: Roisin Willis, Stanford, 1:58.13
• 400 hurdles: Savannah Sutherland, Michigan, 52.46, meet record
• 200: JaMeesia Ford, South Carolina, 22.21
• 5,000: Pamela Kosgei, New Mexico, 15:33.96
• 4×400 relays: Georgia, 3:23.62

Sarah Lorge Butler contributed to this report.