Duos dominate on first day of 2025 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships
Oregon senior Matthew Erickson qualified fourth overall for Friday’s men’s 800m final with a semifinal time of 1:45.89. Photo by Rian Yamasaki.
By Owen Murray, TrackTown USA
Results | Broadcast Information
The first day of competition at the 2025 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships was a major one: Two athletes set collegiate-leading marks while long-awaited trophies started to make their way home.
Two duos of teammates, though — Minnesota hammer throwers Kostas Zaltos and Angelos Mantzouranis and New Mexico 10000m pair Ishmael Kipkurui and Habtom Samuel — swept the top-two slots of their respective championship events.
Aleksander Solovev (JR - Texas A&M) and Nathaniel Ezekiel (SR - Baylor) set the two collegiate-leading marks on the day. Solovev dominated the pole vault field, where he cleared 5.78m (18-11.5) to take the crown. Ezekiel didn’t wait for a trophy on offer to pull out the spectacular. The Paris Olympian set his own collegiate-leading mark in the 400m semifinal round: 47.86 seconds.
“This year, when I went 47 (seconds) in the Big 12 preliminaries, I felt like I had it already,” Ezekiel said. “I just had to do something in the finals — it gave me a lot of confidence.”
Mississippi State senior Peyton Bair won the decathlon 100m in 10.25 seconds early on — .05 seconds faster than his previous championship record. No other athlete ran faster than 10.69 seconds. Bair added a second personal-best mark of the day in the long jump, where he laid down a 7.28m (23-10.5) mark (fourth-best in the competition), and a third in the 400m, where he won in 46.00 seconds. Bair ended the day by leading the decathlon field with 4479 – nearly 300 points ahead of second place.
Several other athletes had personal-best marks in multi events: Two of the top four in the shot put — winner Marcus Weaver (SR - Arkansas) and fourth-place Alexander Jung (SR - Kansas); Bair and Weaver in the long jump; Jung, Paul Kallenberg (JR - Louisville) and Emil Uhlin (JR - Kansas State) in the 100m and five other athletes in the 400m.
Seven athletes qualified from the second heat of the 1500m semifinals after a tactical opener (winner Jack Crull ran 3:51.96). Adam Spencer (SR - Wisconsin) had the leading time — 3:41.67 — just ahead of Simeon Birnbaum (SO - Oregon), who ran 3:41.77 in front of a home crowd.
“It was nice and honest and not too quick,” Spencer said. “It was probably the best outcome you can expect from the NCAA semis.”
Oregon sophomore Simeon Birnbaum. Photo by Rian Yamasaki.
Birnbaum, who won the event in Eugene at last month’s Big Ten Outdoor Championships, said that his goal was “to just win”.
“It’s exactly how I wanted it to unfold,” Birnbaum said. “We were in the holding area watching the first heat — they were jogging — and said ‘We can get seven guys through now.’”
The 3000m steeplechase, though, was stacked with youth. Two of the top three runners from the first heat were freshmen (Mathew Kosgei, FR - New Mexico and Geoffery Kirwa, FR - Louisville) along with two in the top three of the second heat (Joash Ruto, FR - Iowa State and Collins Kiprop Kipngok, FR - Kentucky). All four qualified for the final on Friday.
Ruto ran the top-overall qualifying time (an 8:22.94 personal-best) in a fast second heat, ahead of Paris Olympian James Corrigan (JR - Brigham Young). Big Ten champion Benjamin Balazs (SO - Oregon) finished in the final time-based qualifying spot after waiting in the final positions for most of the heat — he said that he was “expecting a fast race” and knew that he could beat out a slower first heat, just like Birnbaum.
In the sprints, Auburn sophomore Ja’Kobe Tharp led the 110m hurdles qualifying heats with a 13.15 second qualifying time; top-seeded Kendrick Smallwood (JR - Texas) finished second overall.
“This year we put in three times the amount of work we put in last year,” Tharp said of his team. “I know that our boys are going to go out there and show it this weekend. I’m ready to see that happen.”
T’Mars McCallum (JR - Tennessee) doubled up on sprint preliminary wins; after winning the first heat of the 100m, he emerged from the second heat of the 200m with a 20.03 second first-place finish.
The duos, though, still had to have their say.
Minnesota pair Kostas Zaltos and Angelos Mantzouranis went 1-2 at Hayward Field in the hammer for the second time this season. Zaltos called the pair “the best duo of all time in NCAA history” right after throwing a personal-best 78.08m (256-2) on his fourth attempt (Mantzouranis finished second with a 76.96m throw). “We have a very friendly competition in training,” he said.
That wasn’t all that mattered, though. Zaltos had his own goals.
“I finally won, after my fourth time being here,” Zaltos said. He carried a sticky note with the results of each season he’d competed in the NCAA, which he wrote down in 2023 after finishing second at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
The first two (2021 and 2022) read BRONZE MEDAL — those he already knew. The next read SILVER. 2024 wasn’t gold, yet — that one said REDSHIRT YEAR.
2025, he’d decided, was when he’d win gold. He paid it off on Wednesday with his personal-best mark.
Strong finish all around.
— NCAA Track & Field (@NCAATrackField) June 12, 2025
Tyrice Taylor 1:45.23
Koitatoi Kidali 1:45.31#NCAATF x 🎥 ESPN pic.twitter.com/6E6RfS5rCD
Zaltos and Mantzouranis weren’t the only teammates competing together. Indoor 800m champion Matthew Erickson (SR - Oregon) made his race “more stressful” than he wanted; the Duck had to wait even after running a personal-best 1:45.89 in the first heat of the outdoor semifinal. His teammate, Koitatoi Kidali (FR - Oregon), ran in the same heat — something Erickson said he loves.
“He ran really well today,” Erickson said. “I feel like competitors can be a little bit intimidated by him at times. They don’t know how he trains or what his strengths are. When you’re going up against a 1:42 guy, that’s intimidating. If I didn’t know him, I’d be scared as hell to go up against Kidali — even though I do know him, sometimes I’m scared.”
Their (first) heat, though, was the fastest — each of the top five times (all personal-bests) came from it, and Erickson was made to watch the next two with his qualification hopes on the line.
“There’s two things I hate in the 800m,” Erickson said. “One is getting boxed in. The other is leaning and having people swinging on you in the last 200m. Usually I like to be the hunter. Today, I was getting hunted.”
No one displaced him, though, and he’ll have the chance to defend his indoor title on Friday.
Third-seeded Ishmael Kipkurui (FR - New Mexico) and second-seeded Habtom Samuel (SO - New Mexico) were another pair of teammates to take a top-two sweep — in the 10,000m, the two ran 29:07.70 and 29:08.73, respectively, to snag the honors.
Jason Swarens (SR - Wisconsin) was another Big Ten outdoor champion who made his return to Hayward Field in style. Swarens emerged from a dynamic shot put field to claim his first national crown; the Badger finished second in 2024. His last throw was the necessary winner.
“I knew it was coming — I’ve had some big throws this year. I just had to line one up.”
— Wisconsin senior Jason Swarens
“I knew it was coming — I’ve had some big throws this year,” Swarens said. “I just had to line one up.”
After leading before the final stage of throws, Swarens fell behind four of his competitors — two of whom (Thomas Kitchell, SR - North Carolina and Kobe Lawrence, FR - Oregon) would set personal-best marks.
None, though, had hit 21m, which he said he thought would be the winning bar. He finished fourth at the outdoor championships in 2022, then third in 2023, and then second in 2024. His final throw was the one he knew was coming — the one he’d waited a career for.
He unloaded — 21.23m (69-7.75) — and “blacked out”.
When he woke up, he was a national champion.
Competition continues with the women’s events at Hayward Field on Thursday, June 12. The first decathlon events start at 9:45 am, the field events begin at 1:30 pm, and the track kicks off at 4:05 pm PT. Those out of town can catch all the action on the ESPN network.
DAY ONE PHOTO GALLERY
Photos by Rian Yamasaki, TrackTown USA
