AUSTIN, Texas — Olivia Markezich is a national champion.
On Saturday, the Notre Dame track star crossed the finish line in the 3000-meter steeplechase event at the NCAA Championships with a time of 9:25.03. The mark is a record for the University of Texas’ track facility, the Mike A Meyers Track and Soccer Stadium. Markezich won the event by more than 5 seconds.
The Washington native entered Saturday’s final as the top seed after posting a time of 9:40.81 in Thursday’s semi-final. She won the event at the 2023 Outdoor ACC Championships a few weeks ago with a time of 9:40.65. Her personal best entering Saturday was 9:35.80.
Markezich is Notre Dame’s second national champion in women’s track and field this academic year, as Jadin O’Brien won the pentathlon at Indoor NCAAs. O’Brien competed in the heptathlon at Outdoor NCAAs, finishing seventh (5940) and earning All-America status.
In addition to Markezich and O’Brien, there were multiple other notable performances, including a pair of personal bests. Madison Schmidt tied for 18th in the high jump with a 1.81 meter mark, and Alaina Brady earned an 11th-place finish in the heptathlon with a personal best of 5739.
The women finished with 12 points, good for a second-place finish overall.
On the men’s side, both John Keenan and Carter Solomon — two standouts at this year’s Outdoor ACC Championships — earned All-America status. Keenan took seventh place with a 75.96M mark in the javelin event, shattering his previous school record of 72.06M. Solomon also finished seventh overall in the 5000M event, crossing the finish line at 14:09.57. With that, Solomon wrapped up a year composed of two individual ACC titles (Cross Country 8K and Outdoor 10,000M) and three NCAA Championship berths.
All meet results can be found here.