When the Florida women’s track and field program drove five-and-a-half hours northwest to Auburn, Alabama, earlier this week, there was a clear goal on their mind: an SEC triple crown. After claiming conference titles during the cross country and indoor seasons, the 2026 SEC Outdoor Track and Field Championships were the only thing standing between head coach Mike Holloway’s group and a season that would be elevated from historic to legendary.
By nearly every conceivable metric, the Gators stepped up to the plate and delivered their best within the confines of Hutsell-Rosen Track from May 14-16. Florida sent athletes to Auburn in 16 events, and it scored in 13. It was a weekend characterized by overperforming entry seeds and battling to the very last moment. 44 of the Gators 107 points came in distance events, but support came from all over, with double-digit efforts in the sprints, jumps and throws as well.
“It puts us amongst the elite,” Holloway said of the triple crown. “I’m almost speechless. Kudos to Coach [Will] Palmer for getting it done in the fall. We all came together in the indoor season and got it done, and we came in here today and the ladies were on a mission all weekend.”
Day 1
Imani Washington was in the metaphorical lead-off position for Florida, as the hammer throw was the first scoring opportunity of the weekend. In a performance that mirrored what she did at the SEC Indoor Championships in the weight throw, Washington launched a personal best to place sixth overall. Her 62.48-meter mark earned three points for the Gators, setting the tone for a successful weekend.
“Coming off of the indoor SEC championship, I wanted to score points for my team,” Washington said. “My goal was to just take one person at a time. I did that, and I’m just excited because I’m ready for these girls to turn up and do their best.”
The final event of the first day was the women’s 10,000 meters, and Florida’s chances at the team title relied heavily upon the outcome of 25 laps around the track.
In a bold early move, Texas A&M’s Megan Roberts and Vanderbilt’s Tyla Lumley opened an 11-second gap on the rest of the field. All four Gators – senior Hilda Olemomoi, sophomores Reagan Gilmore and Judy Chepkoech and freshman Desma Chepkoech – opted to remain patient in the chase pack.
That proved to be the right decision, as Roberts and Lumley fell off pace while the entire Florida quartet was still in a group of 10 contending athletes with two kilometers remaining. Judy Chepkoech and Olemomoi were comfortably in a scoring position, but Gilmore and Desma Chepkoech were trying to maintain contact to the top eight.
“Whenever we’re next to each other, we’ll try and make little comments,” Gilmore said. “Hearing those kinds of affirmations from someone I train with every day is so motivating… If she can do it, I can do it, and doing it together is obviously easier than doing it alone.”
Judy Chepkoech maintained second position through the closing laps, eventually coming across the line in a runner-up finish at 33:04.04. Olemomoi lost some ground but managed four points with a fifth-place finish. The pair had already tacked 12 points onto the Gators total, but there was still an opportunity for more.
Mississippi State’s Naomi Jepleting seemed to have had a chokehold on the final scoring place with 1,200 meters to go, holding an 11-second advantage over the trailing Florida duo. But Gilmore and Chepkoech picked up the pace, reducing the gap to just four seconds at the bell. On the final lap, Gilmore found another gear, overtaking Jepleting on the final turn and placing eighth.
“Knowing that point was only one person ahead of us, you might as well die trying to get there,” Gilmore said. “The meet could come down to one point, and I know if we looked back and it was a one-point difference, we would’ve kicked ourselves for not trying.”
Her 70.42-second closing 400 meters – the fastest in the field – earned the Gators their 13th point from the event, situating them in second in the team standings at the end of the first day of competition.
Day 2
Sophomore Pauline Bikembo and freshman Eden Robinson excelled across seven events to put seven points on the scoreboard for Florida in the women’s heptathlon. Both Gators had worked their way into a scoring position after the first day’s events and fought to keep those points on the board across the final three events.
For Bikembo, the turning point came early on day two. A leap of 5.96 meters in the long jump was followed by an event win in the javelin at 45.26 meters, propelling the French athlete from eighth into third. Bikembo slipped a spot in the 800 meters, but a fourth-place finish is still three spots ahead of what she managed at the SEC Indoor Championships. Her final tally was 5,689 points.
Robinson’s seventh-place finish with 5,558 points was due in large part to impressive showings in the shot put and 800 meters. The Wales native landed the second-best shot put mark of the day at 13.89 meters before coming across the line in a personal best of 2:14.35 in the 800 meters, placing third.
Florida’s next scoring opportunity came in the shot put, where Alida van Daalen and Gracelyn Leiseth delivered with nine more points. Both women landed season’s bests, as the senior van Daalen placed fourth at 17.95 meters and the junior Leiseth finished fifth with a 17.88-meter effort.
The Gators’ title hopes got a boost on Friday evening not just from the events they scored in, but also in events their opponents crucially failed to score in. For example, Georgia entered the long jump with the first- and seventh-seeded athletes, putting them in line for 12 points if the order held up. Instead, neither Bulldog scored. Florida junior India Alix did everything she could to fight for a surprise point, but a personal best of 6.17 meters landed an agonizing two centimeters outside of a scoring position.
Day 3
As the calendar turned to the final day of competition, the Gators ranked second on the team tables but were projected to win by a double-digit margin. Florida advanced seven women to track finals across five events in the qualifying rounds on the first two days, where they were set to accompany strong contingents in field events, relays and the 5,000-meter final.
Doubling back from her near-podium finish in the shot put, van Daalen stepped into the discus circle Saturday afternoon as the prohibitive favorite. She had won each of the last two conference titles, had the best mark in the NCAA this season and the third-best mark in collegiate history. The Paris Olympian easily lived up to expectation, as each of her six legal throws would have been far enough to win the event by nearly three meters. Van Daalen saved her best for last, producing a 66.70-meter heave on her final attempt that established a new meet record and is now the farthest throw ever by a collegiate athlete in a championship meet.
“I feel good about the day,” van Daalen said. “There’s a lot more in the tank. That may be why my reaction was not as excited: because I know there’s a lot more there. Even the 66.70, I didn’t connect everything… I’m excited to show it in the right moment.”
After van Daalen solidified her three-peat, attention shifted to the triple jump runway. Sophomore Asia Phillips was the conference bronze medalist indoors, and freshman Gabby Pierre had jumped a competitive personal best of 12.71 meters at the Gators last meet in Jacksonville.
Things started picking up for Florida’s duo in the third round, where Phillips leaped 13.37 meters to take the lead and Pierre went out to 13.05 meters, her best jump since she was a high school junior. Phillips’ advantage held steady over the final rounds as she sat a tenuous two centimeters ahead of Oklahoma’s Riley Ammenhauser. After the Sooner’s final attempt came up short, Phillips was able to take a stress-free, celebratory jump as the SEC champion. The result was the best jump of the Ontario, Canada, native’s life. With a 13.59-meter effort, Phillips reset a personal best that had stood since July 21, 2023, and moved to sixth in Florida history.
Pierre’s impressive mark was bumped down from fifth at the halfway point, but it stood strong against an intense competition for seventh when the dust settled, earning a surprise two points. Like the long jump, UF got a boost when Georgia’s Skylynn Townsend – the best jumper in the conference this year – failed to record a legal mark.
With a pair of SEC golds adorning the necks of two Gators, all eyes fell to the track where the triple crown would be won or lost. Florida had used three different 4x100-meter relay lineups this season, and the one the coaching staff landed on for this final had been the slowest of the three during the regular season. However, junior Quincy Penn, sophomore Jade Brown, senior Gabby Matthews and freshman Sydney Sutton flipped that script completely. The quartet got the baton around in 43.01, placing sixth in the strongest field in the NCAA and becoming the fifth-fastest relay team in program history.
Senior Tia Wilson and freshman Claire Stegall were the next Gators to take to the track, lining up in the 1,500-meter final. Both athletes won their preliminary heats a night earlier, and they entered the final seeded second and third, respectively. The race went out slowly over the first three laps, seeming as if no runner wanted to be the one to make the first move. With 200 meters to go, it was Wilson that swung around the outside to get ahead of South Carolina’s Salma Elbadra – the SEC Indoor champion in the mile and fastest woman in the field.
“There was a lot of congestion and people were stuck,” Palmer said. “It’s kind of like crossing three lanes on an interstate in heavy traffic. When you have a gap, you just have to move.”
Elbadra matched the move and the pair peeled away from the field, but Stegall was able to stay at the front of the chase pack. The home straight became a duel between the two most recent SEC Indoor mile champions, and Elbadra had just enough strength to fend Wilson off. The Great Britain native had the fastest final lap in the field, but she finished just .04 seconds behind Elbadra in 4:09.84.
Stegall’s battle over a single place was even closer, as she finished third in 4:11.17, a mere hundredth-of-a-second ahead of Kentucky’s Doricah Minsari Isoe.
In Friday’s qualifying round, Penn ran a 400-meter personal best of 51.27 seconds to win her heat and advance to the final. On Saturday, she replicated that feat when it mattered most, powering her way around the oval in 50.93 seconds. The Bahamian junior was the 26th-fastest woman in the SEC during the regular season but the fifth athlete across the finish line in the championship race. When the clock stopped, Penn became the fifth Gator to ever break 51 seconds for a quarter-mile.
Matthews was the next Florida athlete to return to the track for an encore, stepping into the blocks for the 100-meter final. Like Penn, Matthews was ranked well outside of a scoring position entering the weekend, boasting only the 14th-fastest clocking in the conference. She sent a warning shot in the qualifying round, decelerating before the finish line and still winning by a full tenth. It was clear she had more in the tank, and she proved just that in the final.
Ole Miss’ Alicia Burnett, the conference champion over 60 meters indoors, held an early advantage in the final, but Matthews made short work of making up the gap once she reached top speed. She crossed the line in first, and the clock read 10.97 seconds. While competing at Ole Miss in 2024, Matthews won the conference title in the 400-meter hurdles. Fast forward two years, and she’s matched that a quarter of the distance and without barriers in her way, becoming the second-fastest Gator of all time in the process.
The newly crowned champion didn’t have much time to rest on her laurels, though, as Matthews had the 200-meter final scheduled in exactly an hour. Georgia’s Adaejah Hodge was the heavy favorite in this event, and she proved why the instant the gun went off. The Bulldog built an early lead that she never relinquished, leaving Matthews and her rivals in her wake. Matthews wasn’t able to make up ground in the closing stages the same way she did over the shorter distance, finishing a strong fourth-place in 22.56 seconds. Factoring in her relay contribution, Matthews posted 15.75 of Florida’s 107 points.
Sandwiched between Matthews’ runs was the 800-meter final, where redshirt sophomore Layla Haynes and Stegall added nine more points to Florida’s total.
It was a tale of two races for the Gator teammates. Haynes stuck her nose in the lead pack early on, coming through 400 meters at a hot pace of 57.64 seconds. Stegall, managing the fatigue in her legs from her 1,500-meter bronze 80 minutes prior, was the slowest athlete through the first half of the race by over a second.
“Claire walked off the track and was like, ‘I don’t think I could have gone faster through the first 200 [meters],’” Palmer said. “That was kind of what she had, and we figured she’d have to run pretty even coming off the 1,500. You don’t have a lot of zip.”
The conservative first lap paid off for Stegall, as she overtook three runners in the final half-lap to finish sixth in 2:01.15. Her final 400 meters was covered in 61.24 seconds, the fastest in the field. In her first year in Gainesville, Stegall has contributed 19 points on the track at the SEC level and was 10 seconds outside of scoring for the conference championship team during the cross country season.
Haynes only moved up one place on the final lap, but she held on tight to the leaders and was rewarded handsomely with a bronze medal and a historic time. Finishing in 1:59.38, Haynes became the first Gator to break the two-minute barrier and just the 19th woman in collegiate history to accomplish that feat. She also earned her third Barbadian national record of the year, after already establishing a new all-time mark in the indoor 800 meters and the 1,500 meters. Haynes shaved well over three seconds off of her personal best, an accomplishment rarely seen in the half-mile.
The triple crown was all but wrapped up entering the weekend’s final individual event, but a handful of 5,000-meter points from Olemomoi and Wilson finally sealed the deal. Olemomoi was with the leaders early and held on for a bronze medal, finishing in 15:47.14. When added to her four points from the 10,000 meters, Olemomoi has now accumulated 85 individual points throughout her career at the SEC Championships, indoors and out.
Wilson picked up five spots over the final mile, eventually finishing in seventh and bringing her point total for the weekend to an even 10.
In a sight reminiscent of the indoor season, the Gators had the team title mathematically clinched before the final event went off, meaning they could scratch the 4x400-meter relay.
Florida’s women had gone just two years without winning a conference cross country title, and they did so in October. They had gone 12 years without winning a conference indoor title, and they did so in February. They had gone four years without winning a conference outdoor title, and they did so in May.
Florida’s women had gone 29 years without winning the SEC triple crown in the same academic year, and they did so in 2025-26.
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org and follow him on X at @phofmahoney.
Paul is a senior in his fourth semester on the track and field/cross country beat for The Alligator. In his free time, you can increasingly see him jogging around Gainesville or endlessly falling deeper down the rabbit hole that is track Twitter.
