The race was set up perfectly for Justin Braun. After running an outdoor personal best in the preliminary round two days earlier, the Florida senior settled into his blocks in lane five. On his right shoulder, a few meters ahead of him on the bend, Alabama junior Samuel Ogazi did the same.
The pair of conference foes were in the same position two weeks ago in the SEC 400-meter final. In that race, Braun did an admirable job of maintaining contact with Ogazi over the first half of the race, but all he could do was watch as Ogazi pulled away down the homestretch and became the fifth collegian to ever break the 44-second barrier and finishing over a second ahead. In this rematch, he was intent on closing the gap.
At the gun, Braun launched himself out of the blocks and began to make up the stagger on Ogazi, using the visual cue of having someone to chase to his advantage. Ogazi was fighting to break free of Braun’s range, but the Gator stayed glued to his inside shoulder. As they broke free of the field onto the final straightaway and it became clear the SEC champion would have enough in the tank to hold off his rival, attention shifted to the clock. Ogazi stopped it at 43.82, with Braun leaning across the line behind him and staring down the display to see what it read.
43.99.
The broadcast camera caught a moment of shock and elation wash over Braun’s face as he embraced Ogazi. The win would have been nice, but ultimately, he just needed to finish inside the top three to earn a spot at the national championships. What was undeniably nice, however, was becoming the sixth-fastest quarter miler in NCAA history. After starting his career at USC with injury, followed by illness and injury once more, Braun notched his first individual berth at the outdoor national championships, and he did so in historic fashion.
There were plenty of nice moments for the Florida men’s track and field team in Lexington, as the University of Kentucky played host to the NCAA East Regional. Across two days of competition, the Gators secured 11 bids – 10 individual and one relay – to the NCAA Championships, hosted in Eugene, Oregon, from June 10-13.
Florida left an indelible mark on the field events. Six Gators competed in the jumps and throws, and all but one of them extended their season for another two weeks.
Basel Abosina and Leikel Cabrera Gay had their competitions moved earlier in the morning in hopes of avoiding rain, but neither thrower was shaken up by the schedule change. Absoina, the Egyptian freshman, punched his ticket to Hayward Field on his first attempt in the hammer throw, recording a mark of 66.90 meters. He finished eighth overall.
Cabrera Gay matched his teammate’s feat, as the Cuban junior’s first-round effort of 66.20 meters would have been good enough to qualify in the men’s javelin. However, the national runner-up from a year ago made his return trip to Oregon a little more comfortable with a second attempt that landed at 70.15 meters, good for fifth place on the day.
Jarno van Daalen earned a pair of qualifications to his first outdoor national championship meet. The Dutch freshman placed third in the shot put on Wednesday, throwing 19.46 meters, before throwing the discus 58.63 meters on Friday to place sixth. Van Daalen already has a first-team All-America honor to his name from the indoor season, where he finished seventh at nationals.
Despite winning the SEC title two weeks ago, Temoso Masikane found himself on the ropes entering the final round of the men’s long jump. The freshman from South Africa was positioned outside of the top 20, having only recorded a best mark of 7.50 meters. However, he managed to keep a steady head as he tore down the runway for what could have been his final attempt of the season, and made the most of it. His 8.05-meter leap catapulted Masikane into the lead and marked his best jump in over three months. Masikane will head to Oregon with an eye on improving his sixth-place national finish from the indoor season.
Jaden Lippett had a similarly stressful experience in the triple jump. With a third attempt of 15.83 meters, the sophomore slotted in at 12th, clinging onto the final qualifying spot. Lippett jumped relatively early in the order, so he had to watch competitor after competitor try to scratch and claw their way to one more meet. But when the sand was raked for the final time, the result held. Lippett now has an opportunity to return to the runways of Hayward, where he failed to record a legal mark at last year’s national championships.
Three more Gators qualified in track events, with Kelvin Cheruiyot leading the way in the 10,000 meters. The four-time school record holder opted not to race the 5,000 meters even though he was ranked 10th in the East, putting all his focus on the 25-lap event.
Cheruiyot raced smartly, staying patient with a sizable pack through six kilometers before joining a breakaway trio that featured Louisville freshman Elsingi Kipruto and Alabama junior Dennis Kipruto. Cheruiyot watched the other two create a bit of a gap over the final 400 meters, but he got the job done nonetheless with a solid third-place finish in 28:33.20. Cheruiyot’s impressive national resume already includes a 14th-place finish during the cross country season and an 11th-place finish in the indoor 5,000 meters.
Oussama Allaoui was the other distance Gator to qualify through to Eugene, finishing fourth overall in the 1,500 meters. The Moroccan freshman made a bold move to the front at the bell and, while that surge was quickly swallowed up by the pack, Allaoui had enough strength to hold on in the final 100 meters and lock in his first national championship appearance.
Vance Nilsson is also headed to his first NCAA meet as an individual after picking up a heat win in the 400-meter hurdles. Nilsson equalled his two-week-old personal best with a 48.77-second clocking, ranking him as the fourth-fastest man in the championship field. The sophomore already has a strong history at Hayward Field, as he won the U.S. junior (under 20) title and nearly made the Olympic Trials final on that track in the summer of 2024.
Braun returned to the track for the final event of the meet, anchoring the Gators 4x400-meter relay team to a seventh-place overall finish. Freshman Jayden Horton-Mims, sophomore Nicholas Spikes, junior Malique Smith-Band and Braun got the baton around in 3:01.45. The Florida 4x400-meter relay has garnered first-team All-America honors at 18 consecutive NCAA Outdoor Championships, winning four of those titles and setting the collegiate record in 2023.
In the open 400 meters, Spikes posted one of the most impressive non-qualifying performances of the weekend. He ran a personal best of 45.38 seconds in his preliminary round to advance to Friday’s quarterfinal, where he finished fifth in Braun’s heat but ran another personal best of 45.02. Spikes was the fastest man to miss out on Eugene after dropping .60 seconds off his lifetime best over the course of the meet.
Freshman Riley Smith put up a valiant effort in his first taste of the national postseason in the men’s 1500 meters, but the Buchholz alumnus came just one spot shy of advancing to Oregon.
The men’s 4x100-meter relay team seemed poised to advance to another NCAA Championship with graduate student Wanya McCoy gobbling up ground on the anchor leg, but in a scene that has become far too familiar for the Bahamian Olympian, he pulled up with less than 30 meters to go and had to be helped off the track.
McCoy has had three seasons end in this fashion since transferring to UF, as he sustained an injury in the 200-meter final at the 2024 NCAA Indoor Championships and the 2025 SEC Indoor Championships. Barring a potential return to run a leg on the 4x400-meter relay in Eugene, McCoy ends his collegiate career as a six-time first-team All-American and the SEC Indoor 200-meter champion in 2024.
The Gators will now venture out of SEC country for the first time this season and head west to Oregon for the 2026 NCAA Outdoor Championships, held at Hayward Field in Eugene from June 10-13.
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.
