From the day Alida van Daalen entered the NCAA, she was a force to be reckoned with in the discus throw. She set the Florida school record in her first competition and capped her rookie season off with a third-place finish at the national championships. In the following two championship meets, she inched closer and closer to a national title, finishing third in 2024 and second in 2025.
The Dutch senior had one final opportunity to reach the podium’s top step on Saturday at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
“I’ve proven to myself multiple times that I’m capable of a lot under pressure,” van Daalen said. “Being the best sometimes is hard, but I like it, I like the pressure.”
The pressure van Daalen found herself under was a result of an absurdly dominant campaign. Across her first three collegiate competitions, her average margin of victory was 9.10 meters. Van Daalen’s 69.31-meter personal best from the NCAA East Regional in May is the third-best mark in NCAA history.
Van Daalen’s first attempt landed at 57.32 meters, the worst throw of her season and only good for fourth at the time. Any inkling of shakiness was disregarded in the following round, however, as van Daalen unleashed a 63.09-meter heave that would have been enough to win the competition by three meters. But van Daalen still had more in the tank, producing a meet record of 65.98 meters on the following throw. She was the only woman in the field to breach 60 meters on the day, and she did so on each of her final five attempts.
“It was a great meet, I’m happy, I’m very happy, but there’s so much more in there,” van Daalen said. “I missed every single throw that I just did and still my consistency was really well.”
This wasn’t van Daalen’s last meet in the orange and blue, as she still has one season of indoor eligibility, but in her last opportunity to represent Florida inside a discus ring, she earned the first NCAA title in the discipline in UF history.
Van Daalen’s victory was the highlight of a strong two days of competition for Florida’s women inside Hayward Field. The indoor and outdoor SEC champions finished second in the team race with 43 points, matching their placement from 2023 and 2024. This meet represented a 13-place and 25-point improvement from last season for the Gators.
In addition to her 10 points in the discus, van Daalen also poured in six points with a third-place finish in the shot put. Her 18.12-meter effort represented her best outdoor throw since 2023 and the highest national placement of her career in the event.
Sophomore Judy Chepkoech also landed on the podium for the Gators courtesy of a third-place finish in the 5,000 meters. Chepkoech originally crossed the line in fourth, but the race winner was later disqualified for a rules infraction. The Arizona State transfer was in range of a scoring position but towards the back of the pack until she put in a surge with 800 meters remaining to push higher in the ranks.
Chepkoech was joined in the 5,000 meters by senior Hilda Olemomoi, who was contesting the final race of her decorated collegiate career. Olemomoi managed a sixth-place finish, earning her 10th first-team All-America honors and her 16th overall across the cross country, indoor and outdoor seasons.
Gabby Matthews became the first Gator woman since 1997 to score in both the 100 and 200 meters. The Jamaican senior finished sixth in the 100 meters before returning to the track less than an hour later to place fourth at double the distance. Matthews, who was a 400-meter hurdler before changing events when she arrived in Gainesville, earned the fourth and fifth first-team All-America honors of her career.
In her fourth national championship appearance, sophomore Asia Phillips scored the first NCAA points of her career with a fourth-place finish in the triple jump. Phillips strung together the best series of her career, with jumps of 13.57, 13.56, 13.34 and 13.32 meters. The performance marked the end of a breakout run of performances for Phillips that also saw her win the SEC title last month. That conference title win at 13.59 meters was the result of her first personal best since 2023.
“I kind of think it was all in my head,” Phillips said. “I had jumped 13.5 [meters] prior to that, but I just kind of got stuck in that 13.3 zone. When you get into a zone with triple jump specifically… other things feel wrong. My coach was like ‘Well you don’t know what right feels like, so just go do it.’”
Tia Wilson also scored the first NCAA points of her career, finishing a solid seventh in the 1,500 meters. With around 200 meters to go, Wilson got tripped up and looked to be fading out of a scoring position, but the senior from England fought back down the home straight to put two points on the board.
“I definitely think I had it in me to score higher,” Wilson said. “It annoys me because I was closing well. I saved energy to be able to kick, and that opportunity being taken away was really frustrating because I still closed well even off losing all my momentum.”
This was Wilson’s last race as a Gator, and she’ll now leave Gainesville as a first-team All-American outdoors, a cross country All-American and the 2025 SEC Indoor mile champion.
“Being patient and trusting the process,” Wilson said is the biggest lesson she learned from her two years in the NCAA. “Sometimes it’s not always what you want, but you’ve got to get through the bad times to get to the good times.”
The 4x400-meter relay team scored Florida’s final points of the meet, recording a sixth-place finish in 3:25.73. Freshman Sydney Sutton posted the Gators’ fastest split, running the second leg in 50.11 seconds. Sutton combined with junior Quincy Penn, freshman Malia Campbell and junior Layla Haynes to deliver Florida’s highest finish in the event since 2021.
Florida’s meet was full of near misses that could have proved critical down the stretch in such a narrow team race at the end of the competition. During the semifinal rounds on Thursday evening, Claire Stegall and Penn were the first women out of the 1,500 and 400 meters, respectively. Olemomoi and Pauline Bikembo both finished ninth in the 10,000 meters and heptathlon, respectively. Bikembo’s impressive point total of 5,903 was just 10 points shy of a scoring spot and moved her to second in UF history behind only reigning world champion Anna Hall.
In addition to her relay performance, Haynes also garnered a 16th-place finish in the 800 meters. The Florida record holder ran 2:01.67 in her semifinal round, missing the fastest final field in NCAA history.
Seniors Akari Isaac and Imani Washington and junior Gracelyn Leiseth secured honorable mention All-America honors in the throws. Washington and Isaac were both at their first national championships in their final collegiate meet, finishing 21st in the hammer throw and 18th in the discus, respectively. Leiseth placed one spot behind Isaac in the discus.
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org. 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.
