First Year? No Problem
A big thanks to Bombas for supporting D3 Glory Days this month. It’s easy to remember to take care of ourselves on race day, but taking care of ourselves on all the days we’re not running is just as important for our performance as runners. Bombas has elevated their recovery game. I find myself walking around the house with our newborn a lot more. The Friday Slides are great for support while taking those extra steps.
For every item purchased, Bombas donates one to someone facing homelessness, and they’ve donated over 150 million essential items to people who need it.
Use code GLORYDAYS21 for 21% off your first order on Bombas.com and GLORYDAYS15 for 15% off for returning customers – for D3 Glory Days readers only!* *One time use per customer, expires July 31st, 2025.
Most track and field athletes spend their whole collegiate careers trying to qualify for the national championships as an individual. Some will accomplish this by the end of their time in D3. A few will make it on to the podium. But there are only a handful that accomplish this in their first year.
Over the past five years, there have been 86 freshman individual All-Americans at the indoor championships and 189 at the outdoor championships. This past outdoor season, 28 freshmen earned individual first-team All-American honors, the most on top of the podium since 2022, which saw an incredible 34 freshman All-Americans indoors and 63 outdoors.
With 15 individual events at the indoor meet and 17 at the outdoor meet, an average of 1.4 freshmen indoors and 2.1 freshman outdoors earned All-American per year per event (excluding the 2021 indoor championships, which were canceled). This would suggest that it is more difficult to make the podium as a freshman indoors compared to outdoors, likely due to a variety of factors such as fewer offered events and fewer accepted entries. The NCAA takes 20 individuals indoors but 22 outdoors.
Some athletes have learned that indoor success does not always guarantee the same outdoors, though.
Luke Freimanis, a decathlete from Carnegie Mellon, accomplished something that only one other person in the past five years has done--he made the indoor multi podium as a freshman. Not only did he make the podium but he nearly made the top position, momentum that he carried into the outdoor season.
Photo by Jen Reagan
“Following a very successful indoor season with a second place finish in the Heptathlon, I had one outdoor meet that I participated in and got the school record for the 110mH for Carnegie Mellon,” he said.
This bright start was unfortunately cut short. “I had a fall and had an open fracture of my right patella,” he explained. “This made me unable to continue the season.”
Freimanis remains vigilant, though. “As of now, my career goals consist of, first, getting better for the next season. That would be getting back to my original state of athleticism and being able to try a Decathlon since I did not have my [outdoor] season.”
Tristan Wright of Lynchburg had a similar experience with injuries, suggesting another reason why success early on in a collegiate career can be hard to maintain. After finishing sixth in the national 60m final at the indoor championships, he said that “due to some injuries towards the end of the outdoor season it was a realization that I need to take better care of my body.”
Like Freimanis, however, Wright also has his sights set high. “I’d like to… continue to [PR] and become a national champion at [one] point.” He is in good company with these goals -- who else was sixth in the 60m their freshman year? Sam Blaskowski.
We might expect sixth place and lower podium positions to be more common than higher podium spots for freshmen, but the most common podium position for freshmen is actually fifth, along with eighth. While the higher spots on the podium are occupied by fewer freshmen, with spots 1-4 less likely to have freshmen than 5-8, it’s surprising to see that the number of freshman champions is about the same as 4th place finishers over the years.
One freshman champion in the 2024-25 season was Tufts’s Elysse Cumberland, who won the 2025 indoor triple jump title. Prior to the outdoor championships, she told us that her goal for that meet was to have fun and not stress about her placing following her indoor performance.
“Of course, it would be nice to place in both jumps, but I am mainly focused on maximizing my individual performance,” she said. I know that however I do this weekend will be reflective of the remainder of my collegiate career.”
Cumberland fell just short of the triple jump first-team All-American podium with a 13th place finish, but did not leave Geneva empty-handed. Her fifth place finish in the long jump makes her an All-American in two different events as a freshman, a promising start to a career in D3 horizontal jumps.
Annika Paluska of Williams College has a slightly different outlook on her career, speaking to us about her goals outside of results after finishing 8th on the podium in the indoor 800m and 5th in the outdoor 4x400m relay. “I hope by the time I graduate I can be confident that I’ve had a positive influence on the team and that I learned and grew as a person from the experience,” she said.
This sentiment carries over to the advice she would give herself after reflecting on the year. “If I could give my freshman year self advice I would say to keep following the path of the things that make you happy,” she said.
While Paluska is in just the beginning of her D3 career, the championships in May marked the end of an era for many graduating seniors, who were in the shows of athletes like Freimanis, Wright, and Paluska just a few years ago.
UW-Whitewater’s Christian Patzka started his career in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, having no championships to qualify for in the first two seasons of his career in D3. He finished his freshman year with a seventh place podium finish in the outdoor steeplechase, and went on to become a two-time national champion in this event, a national champion in cross country, a three-time national champion in the 5k, and a 16-time first-team All-American, making him one of the the most dominant distance runners in D3 history. Looking back, he believes setting his sights high helped him achieve the career that he did.
“The advice that I would give [college] freshmen is do not give yourself limits, even if they are good limits,” Patzka said. “A lot of people are way better than they even realize because of their own expectations.”
Wartburg’s Deyton Love qualified for three national events as a freshman and placed sixth on the podium in the 110m hurdles. They went on to capture six additional All-American honors, including a third place finish in the 2024 110m hurdle final and a sixth place finish in the 2023 outdoor long jump. Love completed a full circle by qualifying for three events for the 2025 Outdoor National meet.
Love leaves D3 with some sage advice to freshman All-Americans. “It can be so easy to get caught up in the outside noise as you’ve already done something that most people may or may not ever achieve so early in your career,” they said. “But stay hungry and stay happy.”
Podcast
Go check out our latest podcast episode with Mike Ko, aka Kofuzi. He’s amassed over 210k YouTube Subscribers and is a great conversation about content creation and his find the joy in running.
A big thanks to Bombas for supporting D3 Glory Days this month. Go check out the Friday Slides. If you need a new pair of slide that are great for support while taking those extra steps, these are for you.
For every item purchased, Bombas donates one to someone facing homelessness, and they’ve donated over 150 million essential items to people who need it.
Use code GLORYDAYS21 for 21% off your first order on Bombas.com and GLORYDAYS15 for 15% off for returning customers – for D3 Glory Days readers only!* *One time use per customer, expires July 31st, 2025.