Photo by Christian Lisle // Olivia Howell, 1600m, Amherst Comet Relays 2018
Saturday, March 11th, 2023,
At 4:00 PM Mountain Time, the Women's Mile Final kicked off, being made up of some of the best in the country in the event.
Within the 10 that made it through the preliminary rounds the day before, one of Ohio's very own, Olivia Howell (Solon 2019), who is currently competing for the University of Illinois, won it all in the mile, racking up her first NCAA title since entering college.
Right off the gun, Howell positioned herself very well in second, just off of Duke's Annika Reiss, and the race remained like this up until the final two laps, where Howell began to turn over and gradually took the lead, eventually going stride for stride with Arkansas' Lauren Gregory, who initially took the lead until the homestretch, until Howell found a final gear and just managed to snag the victory.
Leading up to this day, even taking it back to the start of her collegiate career, Howell came into a new chapter with an already star-studded portfolio of solid personal bests, but also a countless number of victories and state titles from high school:
400m Dash - 56.36
800m Run - 2:08.60
1600m Run - 4:43.25
3200m Run - 10:37.62
5000m Run (XC) - 17:32.50
So far, she has improved quite a bit across the board since her first competition, along with a few new additional events, with Illinois back in January of 2020, the year that everything was cut short due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
800m Run - 2:04.03
1000m Run - 2:46.52
1500m Run - 4:09.71
Mile - 4:33.75
5000m Run (XC) - 17:10.10
6000m Run (XC) - 20:02.9
Given that the outdoor season is soon upon us, we are excited to see what she does in these next few months.
