Before she took the first attempt of her final outdoor season as a Florida Gator, Alida van Daalen had already cemented herself as one of the best female discus throwers in collegiate history. She had a handful of jaw-dropping throws on her resume, a pair of SEC titles and had never finished worse than third at the NCAA Championships. However, the national title evaded her.
Through three meets in 2026, the Dutch senior has made it clear every time she’s stepped into the ring that she is in a class of her own. Van Daalen set the NCAA lead in her season opener, beating her closest collegiate competitor by 10 meters. Two weeks later, she won her third consecutive SEC title by over 6 meters. In the nation’s most competitive conference, all six of van Daalen’s attempts would have won by at least 2 meters.
And then, on Saturday afternoon in Lexington, Kentucky, van Daalen squared up for her final attempt at the NCAA East Regional. She had already qualified for NCAAs again, holding a 5-meter lead, but she was far from finished. It was clear the throw was far from the instant she released the disc, with Florida assistant coach Eric Werskey proclaiming “There it is!” as soon as it left her hand.
The discus returned to solid ground 69.31 meters away from van Daalen, marking an 11-meter victory and third-best performance in collegiate history. It’s the best mark ever recorded in a postseason meet, besting van Daalen’s own throw from the SEC Championships. After agonizing near misses each of the last two years, it seems nothing short of an inevitability that van Daalen will become the first Gator – male or female – to win the national discus crown.
Van Daalen will be joined in Eugene, Oregon, by a pair of her teammates, as junior Gracelyn Leiseth and senior Akari Isaac both qualified to the NCAA discus final as well. Leiseth recorded a lifetime best of 56.89 meters on her final throw to place sixth and return to the national stage. Isaac’s 54.89-meter effort extended her collegiate career by one more meet, punching her first ticket to nationals with an 11th-place finish.
Across two days of competition in Lexington, the Florida women’s track and field team earned 16 bids to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, set to be held inside Hayward Field at the University of Oregon from June 10-13. The Gators will send 17 women’s entries in total, as sophomore Pauline Bikembo had already qualified in the heptathlon.
Van Daalen doubled up events on the weekend, also finishing fourth in the shot put at 17.56 meters. Matching the feat that her younger brother, Jarno, completed a day earlier, van Daalen will contest both events at the NCAA Championships for the fourth consecutive season, and she has only missed first-team All-America honors in one of six national outdoor finals.
Senior Gabby Matthews and Hilda Olemomoi also earned a pair of spots in the national field.
Matthews finished seventh overall in both the 100 and 200 meters, posting times of 11.02 and 22.78, respectively. The Portmore, Jamaica, native will return to Hayward Field for the third year in a row, having recorded a seventh-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles while competing for Ole Miss in 2024 and an eight-place finish in the 200 meters last June. Matthews was the NCAA runner-up in the longer of the two sprints during the indoor season.
Olemomoi was forced to miss last year’s championship meet due to injury despite qualifying in the 10,000 meters, but the veteran sent a powerful message at this meet that she’ll be among the top contenders two weeks from now.
Both the 10,000 and 5,000 meters played out in similar fashion for Olemomoi: She was with a small lead group at the bell before dropping the hammer and winning over the final 400 meters. In the longer race, Olemomoi closed in 65.42 seconds to win in 32:31.21, compared to a 64.75-second close en route to a 5,000-meter heat win in 15:27.89. The national championships will be the final meet of Olemomoi’s collegiate career, and she has a chance to add to a legacy that already features nine first-team All-America honors on the track and four on the cross country course.
Four more of Florida’s national qualifiers came in the distance events.
Freshman Claire Stegall and senior Tia Wilson crossed the finish line in lockstep in their 1,500-meter quarterfinal, with Stegall taking a narrow win in 4:09.33 to 4:09.38. The teammates got to the finish line in different ways, with the freshman moving to the front of the pack with 600 meters to go and holding on the whole way, while Wilson used an impressive surge on the home straight to lock in her position. Regardless of tactical discrepancies, both athletes booked tickets to Eugene all the same.
Judy Chepkoech was in the 5,000-meter heat following Olemomoi’s, and while Alabama junior and reigning NCAA Cross Country champion Doris Lemngole’s win was never in doubt from the first lap, Chepkoech put in a strong effort to finish at the front of the chase pack. Crossing the line in 15:36.94, the Kenyan freshman earned the opportunity to back up her fifth-place finish from the NCAA Indoor Championships in March.
Layla Haynes’ last race entering this meet was a monumental three-second personal best to finish third in the SEC 800-meter final. After entering a new echelon of the event, the Barbadian national record holder lived up to expectations. Toeing the line in the last quarterfinal heat, Haynes needed to finish inside the top three or run faster than 2:02.65 to secure her first national championship appearance.
The race went out fast, and Haynes followed the leaders that were well on pace for a time qualifier at a minimum. A gap began to form over the final 300 meters between Haynes and the leading paid, but there was also a gap between Haynes and the field. Providence junior Maeve O’Neill was able to overtake a slowing Haynes at the finish line, but the hot early pace paid off as her time of 2:00.75 was plenty fast enough to send her to Eugene.
Less than two hours later, Haynes was called upon to anchor the 4x400-meter relay. Junior Quincy Penn and freshmen Sydney Sutton and Malia Campbell got Haynes the baton in second, but she was quickly overtaken and fell to fourth. That position didn’t hold, however, as Haynes managed to fight through the lactic acid flooding her legs and use her 800-meter strength to surge past Ohio State’s anchor. The Gators finished third in their heat, running 3:27.70 to earn the right to race in the national championships.
Penn was also contesting the relay on fatigued legs, as she had qualified in the open 400 meters earlier in the evening. The Bahamas native finished seventh overall in a personal best of 50.78, improving her standing from fifth to third in UF history. Penn had never broken 51 seconds in her career prior to the SEC final on May 16, and she has now done so in arguably the two most important races of her life.
Asia Phillips and Imani Washington both claimed national championship berths in the field, but their respective performances carried different circumstances.
Phillips won the SEC triple jump title two weeks ago and is one of the top national contenders. The Canadian sophomore’s 13.32-meter performance was expected, as she finished fifth and will continue her streak of never missing an NCAA Championship. Across her first three appearances, her best finish is ninth.
Washington, on the other hand, was throwing out of flight three in the women’s hammer, meaning she was not projected to qualify. The senior from Peachtree Corners, Georgia, promptly crumpled up said projections and threw them out thanks to a 64.03-meter lifetime best on her first attempt. After the results of the final flight broke in Washington’s favor, it was made official that she would be ending her collegiate career at her first national meet, competing two days before her 22nd birthday.
Florida’s 17 women’s entries, alongside 11 from the men’s team, will conclude their season at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, 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.
