Add another national championship trophy to the BYU Cougars’ track and field case.
On Friday night in the distance medley relay at the NCAA Track and Field Indoor Championships in Boston, the quartet of Sadie Sargent, Sami Oblad, Carlee Hansen and Riley Chamberlain won the championship, beating out Notre Dame for the title.
Sargent ran the 1,200-meter leg in 3:20.65, Oblad ran the 400-meter leg in 55.50, Hansen ran the 800-meter stretch in 2:07.50, and Chamberlain ran the 1,600-meter leg in a blistering 4:27.78 to bring home the championship.
“We put our heads down and worked,” Sargent said in a school news release. “Coach (Diljeet Taylor) told us to believe in ourselves and in each other. That is exactly what we did today.”
The Cougars, who were the No. 4 seed in the race, were right with the lead pack after Sargent’s opening leg before fading back in the middle portion of the race, which included an incident involving multiple runners who fell.
Then Chamberlain got going.
The sophomore from Loomis, California, quickly got BYU in second behind only Notre Dame’s Olivia Markezich, although things stayed that way for much of the leg.
Just before the final lap, however, Chamberlain overtook Markezich for the lead and didn’t look back to give BYU the win.
The win marked the second time in four seasons that BYU has won the distance medley relay national championship, as Courtney Wayment, Olivia Hoj-Simister, Lauren Ellsworth-Barnes and Alena Ellsworth did so in 2021.
Elsewhere for BYU on Friday, the first day of the championships, Lexy Halladay-Lowry took fifth in the 5,000-meter final with a personal-best time of 15:20.73 and will compete in the 3,000 meters on Saturday.
Additionally, Jenna Hutchins and Aubrey Frentheway took ninth and 11th, respectively, in the 5,000 meter with times of 15:31.42 and 15:37.30.
Meghan Hunter earned a spot in Saturday’s 800-meter final with a 2:03.60, which was eighth overall in the heats, and Carmen Alder finished 15th in the mile heats with a time of 4:41.55.
On the men’s side, Lucas Bons advanced to Saturday’s men’s mile final by winning his heat with a time of 3:58.60, which was seventh overall.
Aidan Troutner, meanwhile, did not qualify for the mile final after running a 3:59.07, a personal best.