Melissa Jefferson-Wooden won the women’s 100m final in a world-leading, personal-best time of 10.65 on Day Two of the 2025 Toyota USATF Outdoor and Para National Championships. Photo by Evan Poulsen.

By Owen Murray, TrackTown USA

What did Kenny Bednarek think of his first-ever U.S. 100m title?

“I say it’s about damn time,” Bednarek said.

The sprinter ran a personal-best 9.79 seconds in the men’s 100m final to secure his first-ever U.S. title in a field that demanded a sub-9.84-second time to even claim a medal. The two-time Olympic 200m silver medalist was the top qualifier in both the first and semifinal rounds before improving his best qualifying time by 0.11 seconds in the final. Four athletes ran personal-best times in the race on Friday evening.

“I’ve been second for a very long time,” Bednarek, whose time is tied for sixth in U.S. history, said. “I always knew I had the capability of doing it, but I just had to believe in myself.”

Melissa Jefferson-Wooden ran a wind-legal, world-lead, personal-best 10.65-second 100m to claim the women’s title. Her time, good for fifth all-time in world history and third in the U.S., was “surreal.”

“It actually doesn’t sound real,” Jefferson-Wooden said. “You look at all these races, you look at all these amazing women who have accomplished those things so far, and to think of me as being a part of it is great. I’m grateful for it, and I worked my butt off for it.”

The second day of competition at the 2025 Toyota USATF Outdoor and Para National Championships featured sprint finals for able-bodied and para athletes, alongside a historic decathlon win and jumps finals.

Two-time Paralympic medalist Brian Siemann won the men’s T53 (wheelchair athletes with movement affected to a high degree in their trunk and legs) 800m final in 1:44.41, including a 51.62-second negative split on his final lap. Siemann, the reigning Paralympic bronze medalist in the event, also won the men’s T54 400m final on Friday evening.

“It was just really windy out there,” Siemann said. “I was trying to get a gauge for what the track was going to feel like on that first lap and then once I had that understanding, I was just like, ‘Let’s hit it for the last lap.’”

“That was a special race. This almost was my final — now I’m going to go see what I can do in two days.”

— Cooper Lutkenhaus

High school 800m record holder Cooper Lutkenhaus finished second on Thursday in his heat of the quarterfinal round. On Friday, he returned and overcame an incidental trip on the curve of the second lap to surge into an automatic-qualifying position. His time, 1:45.57, was just 0.12 seconds slower than the personal-best time he ran in June.

“I don’t know if I could’ve imagined it,” Lutkenhaus said. “That was a special race. This almost was my final — now I’m going to go see what I can do in two days.”

Lutkenhaus, 16, will run in the final on Sunday at 1:26 p.m. PT.

Sayers Grooms won the mixed T72 (athletes with a coordination impairment competing in frames) 400m final in 1:31.17 in a race she described as “trying to survive” over the final 300m. The 20-year-old Floridian is a two-time World Championships qualifier and won a bronze medal in the 100m in 2024.

“It shows that my hard work over the last 10 years is finally paying off,” Grooms said. “But also, I know that I have so much more to give.”

Grooms, who has her eyes on an Olympic berth in 2028, founded “Watch Me Run” in 2014, which supports frame runners and educates fans about the sport.

“It was really magical, because I heard so many people cheering for me,” Grooms said of her race. “I just love being in front of crowds.”

Vashti Cunningham returned to Eugene after winning bronze at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials — Track and Field at Hayward Field marked her first non-gold medal at a U.S. indoor or outdoor championship since 2016. Her season-best, world-standard 1.97m (6-5 ½) clearance brought her straight back to the top.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy about a win in my life,” Cunningham said. “I’ve had a really tough season, and it’s just been long. When you don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end, you’re just going through it day by day.”

Reigning Paralympic 400m gold medalist Hunter Woodhall made his first appearance of the meet in the T62 100m final, where he ran a 10.76 — one-hundredth of a second off his personal-best time — to beat the next-closest T62 athlete by more than 0.7 seconds.

“I think, coming in in any competition when you’ve been out of that rhythm, you get kind of nervous not knowing exactly where you are,” Woodhall said. “Just seeing the time on the clock, knowing it’s good, knowing it’s in the right place — it just gives me the confidence to really go out there tomorrow and see what happens.”

Woodhall’s 400m is slated for Saturday afternoon, at 2:33 p.m. PT.

Experienced T54 (wheelchair athletes with full function and moderately or highly affected movement in their legs or absence of limbs) athlete Tatyana McFadden has 22 Paralympic medals to her name — and added another American crown to her collection in the women’s 400m final with a 52.38-second finish.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this, for the national championships to be together,” McFadden, who competed at her first national championships in 2005, said. “I mentioned that to the crowd (in her on-track interview), and they were really excited.”

“It's emotional,” McFadden said. “You deserve to be here and you work hard, and you want to show what your sport's about, you want to demonstrate it.”

By the time the men’s decathlon 1500-meter final arrived on Friday evening, Kyle Garland was nearing the history books. The Pennsylvania native needed just 444 points from the race to set a new personal-best mark.

He went further. Garland’s 4:54.50-second race earned him 592 points, good for 10th all-time in world history and third in the U.S. books.

“The mind was the biggest thing that went right,” Garland said. “I was staying calm throughout all 10 events and didn’t let the moment get ahead of me.”

Garland’s historic decathlon win included wins in the long jump, high jump, shot put, 110m hurdles, discus and javelin. He never lost the lead after the second event, and finished with 8869 points.

Competition continues tomorrow at Hayward Field with the able-bodied men’s and women’s 400m, 1500m and steeplechase finals, and the para 100m, 200m and 400m finals.

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Men’s, women’s 100m finals push record books on Day Two of 2025 Toyota USATF Outdoor and Para National Championships