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Big 12 women’s track and field: Why Cougars will lift league even higher on the track

jordan christiansen
·3 min read
BYU junior Lexy Halladay-Lowry took fourth in the NCAA outdoor 3,000m steeplechase and has since finished eighth at the U.S. Championships.
BYU junior Lexy Halladay-Lowry took fourth in the NCAA outdoor 3,000m steeplechase and has since finished eighth at the U.S. Championships. | Joey Garrison, BYU Photo

Editor’s note: Thirteenth in a series of articles examining how each BYU program will stack up against its new conference foes. Today’s program: women’s track and field.

The BYU men’s track and field squad may have won the USTFCCA National Program of the Year award last season, but the Cougar women do have a pretty good reply: We did it first.

In 2021, BYU finished first in cross-country, seventh in indoors, and 10th in outdoors on the Cougars’ way to also being named Program of the Year. They also finished second in 2022.

In all BYU has had four-straight top-25 finishes at both indoor and outdoor nationals including a 24th-place finish at indoors and 17th at outdoors.

All-time the Cougars boast 10 indoor and 18 outdoor individual national champions. Six of those 28 have come in the last three seasons.

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In 2024, BYU will be led by three athletes who earned first-team All-America status last year. Junior Lexy Halladay-Lowry took fourth in the NCAA outdoor 3,000m steeplechase and has since finished eighth at the U.S. Championships. She’s joined by junior Meghan Hunter, an eighth-place finisher at nationals in the outdoor 800 meters, and senior Cierra Tidwell Allphin, who has earned four All-America honors, including three first-team awards, in the high jump.

Other top returners include sophomore Marianne Barber, a member of the school record-setting 4x100-meter relay and 4x400-meter relay teams and winner of the 400m conference indoor title, and sophomore Riley Chamberlain, a second-team All-American in the indoor mile last year.

BYU was not part of a conference in outdoor but did win its second-straight conference championship in 2023 at the MPSF indoor meet, a satisfying send-off into the Big 12.

Big 12 women’s track and field

The Texas women’s track and field team are the reigning NCAA outdoor champions after winning the 2023 title at their home track in Austin last June. Dominating the meet, the Longhorns finished with a 32-point margin over runner-up Florida. Texas won an amazing four national titles at the meet in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters and 4x100-meter relay. Oklahoma’s Pippi Lotta Enok also won the women’s heptathlon.

The national title was the fifth for Texas at outdoors, having also won in 1998, ’99, ’05 and ’06. The Longhorns also took first-place at the national indoor meets in 1998, ’99 and ’06. The only other Big 12 team to win a national title is Kansas, the outdoor champions in 2013.

Oklahoma State won the indoor Big 12 title with Texas coming in second quite a bit ahead of Oklahoma (third) and Texas Tech (fourth). UT has won eight of the last 10 Big 12 indoor meets.

Based on their performance at nationals, it should come as no surprise that at the outdoor conference meet, the Longhorns easily ran away with the crown last season, beating second-place Oklahoma by 70 points. Texas has won the last four outdoor Big 12 titles.

How will BYU fare?

Halladay-Lowry will certainly be in the mix for a national title and other Cougars could compete for top honors as well. BYU has a top-25 team loaded with talent, but they’re fairly young across the board. This upcoming season will be a chance to drop times and compete with the best in the nation, including a Texas team that will likely win one or both of their last Big 12 meets. But with Texas out of the way and the youngsters grown up, BYU will contend in the years to come.