MADISON — One year ago, Lexy Halladay-Lowry experienced the lowest moment of her running career.
Her BYU women’s cross country team fell apart at the NCAA championship, taking 14th place after entering the race ranked third in the country.
“We failed last year. We failed miserably,” she said Saturday.
It was an imperfect ending to what felt like a near-perfect season, and it was “utter disappointment.”
Halladay-Lowry and her teammates entered this fall’s cross country season knowing they needed a different approach. With the guidance of their coach, Diljeet Taylor, they embraced the imperfect throughout the fall and found joy in growth, not just results.
“We call them butterfly moments — embracing the journey and knowing that the outcome will be worth it. Even if it’s not perfect, the outcome will show the progression,” Halladay-Lowry said while showing off the butterfly necklace that she and all her teammates wore in this year’s championship race.
Taylor gave her team the necklaces a few weeks ago and wore one of her own on Saturday. She told reporters that the image of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly helped her women overcome last year’s heartbreak.
“At the end of that experience, I remember coming back to my team and saying, ‘Just when the caterpillar thinks the world is ending, she becomes a butterfly,’” Taylor said. “Since that moment ... BYU women’s distance has had a ton of butterfly moments.”
The biggest butterfly moment yet came Saturday when the BYU women — and the BYU men, too — finished first in the 2024 NCAA cross-country national championship.
Halladay-Lowry was the top finisher among the BYU women, coming in 14th.
“It was an imperfect season,” she told reporters after BYU claimed the win. But on Saturday, the team had “the perfect race.”
Taylor said BYU’s transformation from the 14th-place team a year ago into the first-place team on Saturday proves what she’s been saying about caterpillars and butterflies.
“You’ve got to stay committed, because when things are really dark, the light is just on the other side,” she said.