After years of coming up short, the University of Chicago women’s track and field team are NCAA champions.
Fourth-years Ren Brown and Claudia Harnett and third-years Emma Kelly and Nora Holmes beat out 11 teams in the distance medley relay event on March 15, to win the Division III indoor national championship—the program’s first track individual national title since 2021. Their victory capped a successful weekend for the Maroons, who ended the meet with a total of seven all-American awards.
The title was something that had been in the relay team’s sights for years; the Maroons finished third in the event in 2022, were national runners-up in 2023 and finished eighth in 2024 despite being one of the top seeds. The Maroons entered this year’s meet in Rochester, N.Y. as the No. 1 seed and broke the Division III event record in mid-February.
“Going into this year’s indoor championship, especially as a fourth-year, I intentionally avoided the mindset of ‘I have to make up for last year,’” Brown said. “Instead, I told myself ‘I want to have fun and do my best because it’s my last indoor season.’ I believe that state of mind really helped, especially because the one thing I’ve learned about track is that it is always unpredictable and anything can happen.”
In this year’s race, Holmes and Brown exchanged the lead several times early with the team from MIT. The Maroons pulled away during the last half of the race, as Kelly and Harnett gave UChicago the victory by four seconds, in a time of 11:37.62.
“Last year was frustrating, and we felt like our result was not reflective of our abilities or the work we had put in throughout the season,” Kelly said. “However, we all knew that we had put our best foot forward and did everything we could to produce the best result. I brought the same mentality to this race; all we needed to do was leave everything on the track.”
The win was the Maroons’ first track national championship since Michelle Dobbs won the 800-meter run in 2016. The Maroons won their last NCAA championship in the field events in 2021, when Isabel Maletich earned the long jump and triple jump outdoor titles.
“I don’t believe that anyone wins a national championship without a great deal of work, and that is certainly the case with this group,” head coach Chris Hall said. “The fact that this team faced adversity and continued to persevere and work hard says a great deal about their character and desire to contribute.”
Added Hall: “Relays seem to mean more than individual championships, so this was really special. Any time you are racing for others heightens the excitement level, both during and after the race. I will remember this special performance for a very long time.
