NCAA track and field Jacksonville 2025: Day one report

(This story has been updated to add new information.)

The schedule said Jacques Guillaume was supposed to make his Jacksonville return for the NCAA Track and Field East First Round preliminaries around 8 p.m. May 28.

The storm clouds replied: Not so fast.

By the time the last times and marks of the day’s track and field action lit up the scoresheet, with former Mandarin High School standout Guillaume now officially a second-round qualifier, Northeast Florida’s longest track day of 2025 had spilled over into May 29.

Hours of lightning left the nation’s top college track and field athletes burning the midnight oil, and beyond, for the first day of the NCAA championships at the University of North Florida’s Hodges Stadium.

Strong thunderstorms halted competition at 5:18 p.m., after the third flight in the men’s javelin and the second flight in the long jump, delaying the action for 4 hours and 42 minutes and bumping several events into the early hours of the morning.

But when the starting gun finally fired past midnight, Mandarin graduate Guillaume was ready. The Navy senior placed fourth in his heat of the 400-meter hurdles in 50.94 to earn one of the at-large berths for the May 30 second round.

Guillaume previously set school records at Mandarin in 2019, competing in both track and cross country with the Mustangs.

Another athlete not fazed by the delay was Georgia’s Moustafa Alsherif, who had begun his warm-up throws around 5 p.m. and then had to place his plans on hold through the evening. The senior finally returned from the long stoppage for a late-night throw of 246 feet, 1 inch to lead the 12 javelin qualifiers for the June 11-14 national championships in Eugene, Ore.

However, host UNF’s two runners both missed out. Aidan O’Gorman finished 24th in 29:43.79 in the 10,000 after entering with the fourth seed, and Robert Pedroza came in 42nd (1:50.53) in the 800.

Former Mandarin runner Gavin Nelson, a Florida sophomore, also exited after a 36th-place 1:49.57 in the 800, while Providence graduate Jocelyn Pringle, now at East Carolina, came in 23rd at 193 feet, 1 inch in the women’s hammer throw on May 29.

Most event favorites progressed comfortably, although not without some surprises.

In the long jump, Albany’s Louis Gordon topped the standings from the third flight with a career-best 25 feet, 8 1/4 inches, while fifth seed Xavier Branker of N.C. State was an early elimination from the 400 hurdles.