The University of Oregon’s women’s track and field team was selected on June 17 as the best program of 2024-25 by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. The Ducks, who won the indoor NCAA national championship and won two of three Big Ten titles, were chosen based on points accumulated according to their final position in the cross-country, indoor and outdoor seasons. The award is Oregon’s first since 2019 and 11th in the women’s program history.
Oregon finished fifth overall in the cross-country season, where it won the Big Ten title and had three female athletes — Şilan Ayyildiz, Maddy Elmore and Anika Thompson — selected as All-Americans based on their top 40 times. Ayyildiz won the Big Ten race and finished 13th overall in the cross-country national final.
The indoor season was when the Ducks captured their first women’s national championship of any kind since 2017, when they swept the indoor and outdoor titles. In 2025, it wasn’t close. After winning the Big Ten indoor title, Oregon (55 points) outperformed second-place Georgia at the national meet by 16 points. First-place finishers are awarded 10 team points, with second receiving eight, third place receiving six and fourth receiving five, descending to eighth place (one point).
In Virginia Beach, the Ducks had just one individual champion — miler Wilma Nielsen, who finished in 4:32.40 with Ayyildiz in fourth place. Jaydn Mays finished second in both the 60-meter and 200-meter finals and Olympian Jaida Ross finished second in the shot put. The win was head coach Jerry Schumacher’s first of his Oregon tenure.
With the shift to the outdoor season came a change to the roster. Mays and Ross exhausted their eligibility with the indoor season, and the Ducks had to turn to a different set of faces for a charge at the championship. Klaudia Kazimierska, who missed much of the indoor season with an injury, returned to headline Oregon’s strong middle-distance group that also included Ayyildiz (the indoor and outdoor collegiate mile record-holder) and Mia Barnett. Before the Big Ten Championships, where the Ducks finished second behind USC, those three were all top-four 1500-meter runners in the conference.
Oregon didn’t have the same firepower at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, where it won just one event (Aaliyah McCormick in the 100-meter hurdles), finished fourth (Ayyildiz) and fifth (Kazimierska) in the 1500m final, and ended the meet 10th overall with a 23 point total. That finish, though, was enough to push the Ducks to the top of the women’s program standings: five points from cross-country, plus one point from the indoor season and 10 from outdoor gave them a 16-point total — six points better than second-place rivals Washington.
Next year is still up in the air for the Ducks — some athletes, like Ross and Kazimierska, turned professional following the season. Oregon is set to host the NCAA Outdoor National Championships at Hayward Field once again in June 2026 nonetheless.
The post Oregon track and field women’s program named best in the nation appeared first on Daily Emerald.