Sonia O'Sullivan: Nothing beats the NCAAs as the breeding ground for track and field champions

Irish Times

3 days ago

This weekend at the famed Hayward Field on the campus of the University of Oregon, another NCAA Track and Field Championships reaches its annual climax.
It's the culmination of the long collegiate season in the US, where many athletes learn their trade due to the cut-throat qualification to get to the finals – and then to ultimately qualify for their final.
Hayward Field in Eugene is now considered the home of US track and field, renovated to host the World Athletics Championships in 2022. At the East and West Regional Championships, 48 athletes qualifying in each event are whittled down to 12 from each region, who then go forward to the NCAA showdown.
Ireland has a long history of athletes competing at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championships. For many, it acts as an apprenticeship where they learn their trade and get plenty of opportunities to practise competitive skills once the qualification times are achieved.
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Traditionally the NCAA was a breeding ground for Irish middle-distance athletes. It's where we have had most success on the NCAA stage since 1921. Irish men have won 30 top three positions in the middle-distance events and since 1982 Irish middle-distance women have been on the podium 10 times.
Three years ago, to help mark and celebrate the 100th staging of the NCAA track and field championships, the association selected the names of 30 past winners and inducted them into the inaugural Collegiate Athlete Hall of Fame.
Among names such as Jesse Owens, Wilma Rudolph, Jim Ryun, Henry Rono, Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner and Merlene Ottey was our own Ronnie Delany.
Irish Olympian Ronnie Delany. Photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish Times
Delany's NCAA career was indeed stellar, winning four individual outdoor titles during his four years at Villanova University from 1955-58, during which time he also won Olympic 1,500 metres gold in Melbourne 1956.
This weekend, there will be seven Irish athletes competing in Eugene hoping to get a place on the podium and score points for their respective universities.
In more recent years, Rhasidat Adeleke was the first Irish athlete to win a sprint title. She won the 400m in 2023, while also helping the University of Texas get on the podium for the 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams, as well as winning the overall team title.
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This year Irish athletes will compete across six events, for seven different colleges. Maeve O'Neill goes in the 800m for Providence College, improving her personal best to qualify from the East Region. She has run 2:03.04, the 24th-ranked time; it just shows how the standard continues to improve each year that just nine athletes will advance to the final.
My daughter Sophie goes in the 1,500m for the University of Washington; her 4:08.21 from early in the season has her ranked 12th. Shane Brosnan is also running for Harvard University in the 10,000m. Lucy-May Sleeman represents Florida State University and Lauren Roy Tarleton State; both will run in the 4x100m relay.
Sophie O'Sullivan in the College Women's 4x800 Championship of America during the Penn Relays at the University of Pennsylvania on April 26th. Photograph:It's a diverse range of events and it also shows how more and more Irish athletes are realising the benefit of pursuing their athletic aspirations abroad, to grow and develop in a larger pool of talent and competition that they would never be able to experience in Ireland.
Sean Mockler also returns for a second NCAA finals representing Indiana University in the hammer and will be looking to improve on his 15th place from 2024. Diarmuid O'Connor goes in the decathlon for University of Connecticut and will need to improve on his season-best score of 7,658 points to improve on his 13th-place finish in 2024.
It's a reality of being a small country that even though we have many talented athletes and developmental coaches, there is still a need for athletes to look for more if they are to reach their full potential.
There is no doubting the improving facilities and support structures in Ireland available to all our athletes. But to be able to compete on the world stage, as many of our athletes are now, you really do need to make sacrifices and step outside of the comfort zone.
The best Irish athletes have nearly all taken the step to train with coaches abroad, working with athletes that are better than themselves. With that they are pushed in training. When you surround yourself in a professional environment then the expectation is greater, and you raise your game across all aspects of life.
Sean Mockler competes in the Men's Hammer Throw - Division 3 at the European Games 2023 in Poland. Photograph:For many years athletes may have trained at a high level but not lived a professional lifestyle. It is only by spending time with athletes on training camps throughout the year that you see first-hand what it takes to be truly professional.
The NCAA Championships may be a breeding ground for many athletes, where they learn how to compete at a high level. But this is also just a starting point for so many that by the time they leave college, they still have so much more room for growth and development.
Some events will reach higher levels than others. But for many this is a stepping stone to an international career, and many athletes that compete at the NCAA Championships this weekend will also be at the World Championships in Tokyo in September, representing their respective countries.
That's the thing about the NCAA. It is a melting pot of international athletes that experience life, academics and sport. And at the end of it all they get to choose if they are willing to go to the next level and commit to the next stage of their development. When the comforts of the university support are taken away, athletes need still to find a similar circle of talent and support to push them further.
So many NCAA Championship finalists have gone on to win medals on the World and Olympic stages. There's no doubt many more of those future stars will be making their mark in Eugene this weekend.