Harrison Murphy sprints to the finish in his heat of the Boys 400m Hurdles Emerging Elite race at the 2025 Nike Outdoor Nationals at Hayward Field on Sunday morning. Photo by Rian Yamasaki.

By Owen Murray, TrackTown USA

Harrison Murphy probably needed a Band-Aid.

His right leg was sliced open, cut maybe an inch long on the side of his kneecap, where it had hit a hurdle. He’d just run what he called “a horrible, s–t time” at the 2025 Nike Outdoor Nationals. He’d been ahead on the back stretch after starting his 400m hurdles race in lane 9, but burned out and trailed the field down the home straightaway.

But after that, sitting alone in a white folding chair inside the depths of Hayward Field as he dropped his spikes into a drawstring bag, he was happy.

Six years ago, the Oklahoma City teenager was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). After beating it, he turned from football, which had dominated his middle and high school years, to the track, where he became one of the best high school hurdlers in his state in his first full year in the sport. He broke the school record in the 300m hurdles en route to a state title, and one year after watching his twin brother compete in NON at Hayward Field, he returned to Eugene in 2025 with a bib of his own — and for the first time ever completed a year of his track and field career.

In January 2019, the Murphys were on a post-Christmas trip to Costa Rica (which was, the following events notwithstanding, fantastic). Harrison’s back was hurting — they thought maybe it was some kind of bacterial infection. They decided to wait it out.

Instead, it got worse. After an emergency room visit that eased their fears (they agreed with what the Murphys thought about the infection), Harrison’s mom, Lee, had to leave for a business trip. Twenty-four hours later, she was on an emergency trip home. When she made it back, Harrison couldn’t walk. She had to carry him to the car.

The first thing they heard after he checked in at the hospital was that they could rule out cancer.

The last thing they said, after he rehydrated and spent the night, was that he had ALL. He spent the next three weeks in the pediatric intensive care unit before he was released for home.

His new life, without context, was one a teenage boy might dream up. He spent his days at home, in his own words, “Grinding videogames and DoorDashing my life.” But he was stuck inside, too, because the growing coronavirus pandemic meant he couldn’t risk contact — not with anyone outside his family, because of his immunocompromised state. His mom wasn’t taking any risks. Their groceries were delivered, then wiped down and dried.

He calls himself “pretty happy-go-lucky”. His mom compares him to Animal, from the Muppets — the “ornery and funny and kind of mischievous” guy, in her words. He wasn’t really interested in wallowing.

“I was just trying to go with the flow with everything,” Harriosn said. “I didn’t really look anything up about the cancer. I was the only one in my family who was just like, ‘All right.’”

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (also known as acute lymphocytic leukemia) is one of the most common forms of childhood cancer — and also one of the most curable. It’s a bone cancer that starts in the marrow. In 2025, the National Cancer Institute found that it accounts for a quarter of all diagnoses in children under 15, and that 85% of patients treated under 18 years old are expected to be “long term event free survivors”.

But the long-haul was immediate. When he was diagnosed, ALL had a treatment period of three years.

“We knew it was going to be the next three years,” Lee said. ”You’re tortured as a parent because you think, ‘I cannot believe my child is going to have to endure this.’”

Harrison started treatment the same day he was diagnosed: February 1, 2019.

The support, he said, was phenomenal. The Murphys got the food train, felt the love from family and friends, but it grew bigger than that. Pins with a 13 (his favorite number) and an “H” began to show up around school, on backpacks and blackboards. They’re still there, too.

It matters the most during the hard times. On March 27, 2019, Harrison was getting ready for another round of treatment. Usually, he just sleeps through it. He got two loading doses — to test that the chemo was safe — and started to doze off.

This time, he woke up before it finished. When he did, his throat was closing up. It was getting hard to breathe. He heard his nurse start yelling — somewhere in there, he said, he got an EpiPen. It’s tough to compare the experience, so he does it like himself.

“Everything’s starting to fade out,” he said. “You know when you get hurt in Call of Duty, and everything’s blurry? I’m going in and out and I’m about to pass out.”

Somewhere in the mixture of more EpiPens and frantic nurses and metal hospital beds rolling down the hallway and into an elevator, he did. When he woke up, it was to (first, another EpiPen, but then) his face, blown up. He looked at his phone — his dad wouldn’t record him — and felt he’d been stung by bees.

“I was chilling,” he said when he looked at the photo he took that day. “Happy to be alive, I guess.”

The strangest part of the experience, the Murphys said, came because Harrison has a twin. Graham plays football and competes in track and field, too — he’s a linebacker and a high jumper. They don’t know if they’re fraternal or identical.

When Harrison was diagnosed and started treatment, they were the same height. When he finished treatment, Graham had sprouted to just over six feet and around 170 pounds. Harrison was still 5’6’’. To their mom, it was “like having a time capsule”.

“I looked at it day-by-day and just tried to keep my head up. You can’t really be negative in that situation. You’ve just gotta stay positive.”

— Harrison Murphy

He’s grown since then — the two are once again about the same height, but if he hadn’t…“I would’ve rocked some high heels, bro,” Harrison said. He’s hanging with the mentality that got him through.

“I looked at it day-by-day and just tried to keep my head up,” he said. “You can’t really be negative in that situation. You’ve just gotta stay positive.”’

In May 2021, he finished treatment. The next two years were focused on recovery. In 2024, he could compete.

Harrison set a goal when he started his season: to break the school record in his race, the 300m hurdles. He started to train — really train — for the first time since recovering. One day, he works out for an hour. The next, he heads to the track. It’s different — so different — from sitting in his room. He dropped personal-best after personal-best as his season began to kick into gear. The times dropped, to 42 seconds, then to 41.

In the regional final, he broke 41 seconds, 0.12 ticks off first place. He got a silver medal, which frustrated him a little, he said, but it was the boost he needed. After that, he said, “I was like, ‘I could win it.’”

When he got to the state 300m hurdles final, he was calm.

“This is the last race,” he told himself. “Just a smooth race. Go run a smooth race. Go run.”

He had three sentences on repeat in his head as he ran: “I’m going to get it. I need it. I’m going to get it.”

In 39.63 seconds, he got it — the school record, a 4A state title and the qualifying time for Nike’s Emerging Elite 400m hurdles category. Suddenly, this wasn’t the last race. The next one was still to come.

The Murphys traveled to Eugene a year ago for Nike Outdoor Nationals, too. That time, Harrison watched from the stands as Graham jumped a personal-best 2.01m mark. He knows what it feels like — they’ve talked about it.

“It’s a Division-I crowd,” Harrison said before the race. “You’ve gotta ball out,” Graham agreed. “Pressure makes diamonds.”

The sun had burned off some of the clouds that made Eugene their home over the first three days of competition by the time Harrison walked out of the tunnel at Hayward Field on June 22.

After he warmed up underneath the grandstand that held his family, the nerves he’d felt over the weekend were gone. He stepped out of the tunnel, though, and they came rocketing right back. He saw the stadium. He felt the atmosphere.

He had the longest walk of the field — out to lane 9, where he said he doesn't like running. The camera parked itself next to him. He was projected, larger-than-life, on the video board adjacent to where his family was sitting on the west side of the stadium.

Lee grabbed her phone. She took a picture of the board. Last year, Harrison was sitting there with her. This year, he had his new place.

Three days before the race, Harrison thought about whether when he crossed the finish line mattered — or if it was just the finish itself that held the value.

“If I win or if I place, that's even better,” he said. “But I'm just so excited to be here. It's only up from here. I mean, nothing…nothing negative can come out of this.”

This was the last race. Just a smooth race.

Just run.

He got out of the blocks. He held the stagger. WIth him on the back stretch, Lee was already on the edge of her seat. Jackson, her oldest, is a thespian. Watching a play was less stressful than this, she thinks.

The stagger caught up on the curve. He made the third turn, and his mom turned, too.

“This is his best part,” she said. She’s willing him towards the front. He’s not sure if he heard her, because he’s blocking out the world. The world, though, hears her.

But Harrison looks tired. Still, he pushes down the straightaway. Somewhere in the mixture of new noise and family standing up and halfhearted rain on rubber, he hits his knee on a hurdle. He keeps going. After 1:00.52, he crossed the line in ninth place. Lee turns again.

“It’s not the best,” she said. “But that’s how life is sometimes.”

You can’t stay negative. You’ve just gotta be positive.

Harrison disappears into the bowels of the stadium, with all the other athletes. He waits in the folding chair, checking his phone and tucking away his spikes. He’s already thinking about when he gets home. He’s not going to rest, he says, not going to take some time off. He’s going right back into intensive training. He wants to come back here.

His knee is still bleeding as he walks away, down the tunnel and towards his family. He could use a Band-Aid, but in this moment, that’s all the treatment Harrison Murphy needs.

News

After beating cancer, Oklahoma state champion hurdler Harrison Murphy healed at 2025 Nike Outdoor Nationals