Hundreds of fans, athletes and coaches cheered on as the national championship banner was unveiled at the 2025 Penn State National Open, revealing Cheickna Traore’s 2024 NCAA Track and Field Outdoor National Championship 200-meter victory.
Fast forward a year later, and while the Nittany Lions won’t have a new championship banner hung from the indoor track, several athletes have pushed themselves one step closer to earning one.
The 2025 track and field season saw its share of highs and lows, from seven school records to a handful of Penn State’s top athletes being injured.
Freshman phenom Ajani Dwyer made his name known in the first meet of the indoor season, running the second-fastest 60-meter time in school history during his first collegiate race.
His 6.55-second personal best didn’t stand for long, as Dwyer soon tied the 6.54-second school record at the U.S. Championship where he finished sixth.
In the outdoor season, Dwyer came within 0.01 seconds of breaking the 100-meter record, but after suffering an injury at the Big Ten championship, his postseason hopes were ruined.
However, he wasn’t the only freshman men’s sprinter to break a school record this season.
In the final meet of the indoor regular season, Jake Palermo took the track and carved more than one second off his 400-meter personal best. The Rochester, New York, native put himself atop the record books with a time of 45.65 — his best of the season.
Three months later at the NCAA East First Round, Palermo set an outdoor personal-best 45.88. Two days later in the finals, he ran another personal-best with a time of 45.75 seconds, but missed the NCAA championship by one place.
Collectively, the men’s sprint squad crushed expectations in the men’s 4x400m, running a season-best at the NCAA East First Round to advance to the NCAA championship.
The group followed with another season-best and No. 3 time in school history in the NCAA championship prelims, securing second team All-American status.
Graduate student Zoey Goldstein made the most of her fifth year at Penn State. She entered the NCAA East First Round seeded 45th, but ran sub-53 seconds for the first time in her career, setting a personal-best 52.56 and the fifth-best time in Penn State history to earn her spot in the finals.
During the indoor season, freshman Tayissa Buchanan made a name for herself, becoming the team’s go-to 600-meter runner following a seventh-place finish at the Big Ten championship.
At 800 meters, school record-holder Hayley Kitching extended her record, running 2:01.14. She also came within two seconds of a school record in the 1,000-meters. However, she sustained an injury prior to her outdoor campaign.
Allon Clay, Olivier Desmeules, Yukichi Ishii and Darius Smallwood were a force to be reckoned with during the indoor season, with Desmeules earning Penn State’s only Big Ten championship in the men’s 600m.
Smallwood set the No. 3 time in the 600m and the No. 2 time in the 800m, while Ishii set the No. 3 time and Desmeules the No. 4 time in the 800m.
In the outdoor season, Handal Roban, who was coming off an injury, Desmeules and Clay earned bids to the NCAA East First Round. Roban and Clay advanced to the NCAA championship, finishing in 14th and ninth place, respectively.
Senior Florence Caron continued to impress in just her second season in the NCAA, furthering her own records in the indoor and outdoor 5,000-meters and the 10,000 meters. Caron competed at the NCAA championship in each event.
Multi-event athlete Maddie Pitts dominated the pentathlon and heptathlon, competing in both at the NCAA championship, as she continued to climb the record books at Penn State, moving to No. 3 all-time in the pentathlon and No. 5 in the heptathlon.
MORE TRACK AND FIELD COVERAGE
Less than a week after the NCAA championship, Handal Roban is back at it again.
