Marching toward America’s 250th birthday weekend, Taylor Lovell, BYU’s newest steeplechase national champion and All-American, is glowing with gratitude.
Her land of opportunity was at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, where she captured a prize she had been chasing for years.
“The journey has been such a long and incredible one,” Lovell told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show this week. “I’m surrounded by the best people and by the best support system. It’s just been a lot of gratitude these last few weeks.”
Lovell has been processing the most significant lap of her life since the second she finished it back on June 13, when she broke away from the field for a stunning 5.5-second victory over the second-place finisher.
Her big finish started with a big plan.
“Before the race, coach (Diljeet Taylor) and I talked about what the plan was. We knew that I had a good close, but in order to use my close, I had to be there (in contention),” she said. “That last lap, I was like, ‘OK! OK! When do I go?’ I was just waiting for that moment.”
Lovell had trailed Notre Dame’s highly touted Sophie Novak for most of the race.
“I knew I had to really drop the hammer,” Lovell said. “I didn’t want to slowly move to the front; I wanted to make sure that my move was very decisive and that I was going to give anyone who was with me a run for their money.”
Racing instinct triggered an inner green light to go, and Lovell took off and grabbed her first lead.
“When I was going, I had no idea where (Novak) was,” Lovell said. “I was just like, ‘I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to keep speeding up because she’s an incredible athlete.’”
With Novak and the others on her heels, Lovell ran toward the last two obstacles standing between her and the finish line — a water jump and a hurdle.
“Even before the race, Coach T was like, ‘You are not allowed to celebrate whatever happens until you are past those two because so many people get excited and then they forget there are those two last hurdles — which are brutal,’” Lovell said.
Ever focused, Lovell cleared the water and then hopped over the hurdle before shifting into championship gear to close out the race.
“I just continued to kick it in. I didn’t want someone to come up and catch me off guard,” she said. “I crossed the finish line and realized that I had done it.”
Attitude adjustment
Twice before, at the 2024 and 2025 NCAA championships, Lovell had crossed that same Oregon finish line in ninth place. She credits an attitude adjustment for her leap to the top.
“I think the past few years I went into that last race and was like, “OK, I have to be All-American, I have to be All-American’ and it really took the fun out of it because it’s like, ‘Well, I have to do this’ and then if you are not having fun with it, when the race gets hard, you have no reason to keep going.”
Lovell spent 2026 finding joy in the process.
“I also made it a goal of mine to, every time I walked onto that track, I took a second and looked around and put a smile on my face because I got to do this and this is what I loved,” she said.
“This year I had so much fun. I loved the process, so when the race did get hard, it was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to give whatever I have because that’s all I can do.’”
Building confidence
Before learning to win, Lovell, who has one more year of eligibility at BYU, had to first convince herself that she belonged.
“When I got to BYU, I was basically a walk-on, so every single time I’ve stepped up to those big races, I’d be reminding myself, ‘No, you do belong here,’” she said.
“I think this was the first year that I got to the starting line telling myself, ‘Yeah, you do belong here’ and really believe it.”
Today, the Gilbert, Arizona, product has a steeplechase national title and two cross country national championships to her name. This fall, she will reunite with Jane Hedengren and the Cougars as they seek to win another one.
“You never give up,” said Lovell on what running has taught her. “You just have to give everything you have because the worst feeling is you knowing you didn’t give everything.
“As long as I give everything, I know it’s OK. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the fact that I can do hard things and I can push through the hard times.”
Lovell has also learned she belongs right where she is, and she’s having fun as a national champion and All-American on the Fourth of July.
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com