Winning a national championship in college track and field is pretty simple when you think about it. You take a bunch of talented athletes and convince them to wear your uniform. Then you ask them to go out there and be talented on the track. It’s exactly how the women of Arkansas won the NCAA indoor title in 2023. They had Britton Wilson who was the most talented woman on the track, and broke records to prove it. But she had help from Ackera Nugent who won the 60 hurdles herself. If you throw in a 4x400m relay title and some points here and there, you have yourself a winner. But the problem with winning a national championship is that as simple as it is, it’s also incredibly hard. Because convincing a bunch of talented athletes to wear your uniform is nowhere near as easy as you might think.

This season it is too early to tell who will win the NCAA championship either indoors or outdoors. But right now the lady Trojans have 9 women ranked in the top 50 on the national list in at least one event. And they would have seven women on the starting list at the NCAA championship meet if we had to host the meet next week. This may not seem like a big deal to you, until you realize, that USC basically doesn’t run distance events at all! They have a cross country team, but they were all the way at the bottom of their conference. That’s because all their resources go to the ladies who sprint and hurdle on the track. And as good as their women look right now, they are still underachieving. 

It only gets scarier for the rest of the NCAA when you consider their recruiting class for 2024. Midway through the year it is abundantly clear that USC’s women have the best recruiting class in the nation, by a lot. The truth is that the women of USC have been a sleeping giant in track and field for a while now. But clearly they are going all in on a national title. Track and field recruiting is an arms race, where only a few schools come to the party with a fully loaded armory. But what USC is doing right now is downright ridiculous. Either nobody else in the nation knows how to recruit, or they figured out a loophole that even I haven’t found yet!

USC’s recruiting class for 2024

The team USC has now is going to make a run at a national title, but next year’s roster is going to be downright unfair for almost anyone else to go up against. Amongst the top track and field recruits across the entire nation, USC was the only school to pull 4 recruits ranked within the top 20 of the nation! That’s literally 1 out of every 5 women who are the best across the country. They did all of this focusing only on the sprints, jumps, and hurdles. They convinced Maira Scott and Rachel Uvieghara to join their team, both of which are ranked numbers 15 and 14 on the SCA national list. But they also got Avery Lewis who is number 5 overall as the top long jumper in her class and a talented sprinter to sign. But the woman everyone can’t stop talking about is Mia Brahe-Pedersen. She’s the top ranked recruit, and a 99 overall rating. Which is what you earn when you go number 1 in both the 100 and 200, and race your way into the USA championship finals against all the pros in both!

If you throw in Falyn Lott as a jumper and hurdler ranked 45th in the nation, they still have 10 percent of all the women in the top 50. They’ve even got more recruits signed who are in the top 300, beyond that. So the moral of the story is if you really want to run for USC on scholarship, it’s probably one of those don’t call us, we’ll call you types of scenarios.

USC’s women have been dominant for years

USC has been doing this for a while. They won the outdoor NCAA championship in 2021 and were led by women like World Championship gold medalist Twanisha Terry to do it. Anna Cockrell swept the hurdles in the national meet, and the lady Trojans went on to win the 4x100 meter relay, before getting second in the 4x400 as well. They also made sure to put at least 2 but sometimes 3 women in every national sprint final.

USC also won the nation outdoors in 2018, using the exact same formula. The only major difference, is that year they won the 4x400 meter relay in order to clinch the victory. The Lady Trojans basically compete in half of the events that are offered in all of track and field. But they just attempt to do all of them, better than anyone else in the nation.

That said none of this is typical. USC this year opened the season with six women performing at NCAA championship level. Christine Mallard is a 400 meter runner, who won the USA junior championship outdoors. But hasn’t even run that event yet during this season. She did however, run the 60 meter dash, and she is ranked 13th in the nation in that event! Their highest ranked athlete is Jassani Carter who is fourth overall in the 200 meter dash. But that is likely going to change because if Madison Whyte and Christine Mallard run with the speed they have already flashed, they should be joining the national list in that event soon too.

The Bottom Line

I’m not here to make a big deal about nothing. A lot of things have to go right for any team to win a national championship. But the hardest part of doing it is getting talented athletes in your uniform. USC has solved that problem. Not just this year, but clearly for next season as well. They may not win an NCAA title, but if they don’t then that season is basically a failure. When you bring in that many talented ladies, the only correct result is always the number 1 spot. The Trojans are coming, and there’s very little any team can do to stop them. Rankings alone won’t win a national championship. But talented athletes definitely do, and USC clearly has enough of them to pull it off.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, RUN GOOD.

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