PHOTO CREDIT: JOSH KUTCHER
There is a version of this sport where siblings push each other for a season and one eventually pulls ahead. That is not what happened in Eugene on Thursday. Mia and Mariah Maxwell went 1-2 in a national final and both made the team that will be representing the USA in Track Town in August at the World U20 Championships.
It was just that kind of day at Hayward Field, the first of five, with more competition to come. Here is what happened on day one.
The Maxwell Twins Go 1-2
Mia and Mariah Maxwell have spent all of 2026 trading the same two spots on the national leaderboard. In January at the Texas High School Indoor Championships, Mia ran 22.89 for the 200m meet record, with Mariah right behind her at 22.97. At Nike Indoor Nationals in March, Mariah flipped the script and won the 200m in 22.84, with Mia second in 23.04. At the USATF Indoor Championships that same month, they went 2-3 in the 60m, Mia in 7.13, Mariah in 7.14. All season, every time one twin has been ahead, the other has been just one step behind, refusing to let the gap widen.
On Thursday at Hayward Field, in the Women's 100m U20 Final, the gap was about a quarter of a second, but it did not matter. Mia ran 11.08 to win. Mariah ran 11.33 for second. The twins from Texas swept the final and punched their tickets to the World U20 Team together.
The depth behind them was real too. Georgia's Ava Kitchings ran 11.39 for third. Ahalyna Taylor and Sanyah Keeton both went 11.49 and Oregon's Aster Jones, a senior from Roosevelt High School who has spent the past two seasons climbing the Oregon all-time sprint lists, ran 11.51 for sixth. But this was the Maxwells' day.
Tate Taylor Adds Another Title to the Résumé
Tate Taylor's spring already includes a national high school 200m record at the Tom Jones Memorial in Gainesville - 0.14 seconds faster than the record Noah Lyles set in 2019. On Thursday in Eugene, he took the Men's 100m U20 title at 10.15, run into a -1.3 headwind at Hayward Field.
Behind him, Ohio State's Kyler Brown ran 10.21 for second, and Dillon Mitchell, the C.E. King sophomore who ran a wind-aided 9.92 at the UIL state meet last month, took third in 10.23, just off the qualifying spot. Nicholas Altheimer was fourth in 10.37 and Auralleus Hicks, the Tualatin senior who won the Oregon 6A state title in the 100m and was runner-up in the 200m this spring, finished fifth in 10.44.
The Discus Throwers We've Been Following All Season
Jaslene Massey's has been on a tour through the country's biggest meets: Arcadia, Mt. SAC, Nike Indoor Nationals, and a California state record of 196-4 that sits second on the all-time U.S. high school list. On day one in Eugene she won the Women's Discus U20 title at 60.27m.
Behind her was Jillian Scully of LSU and in third was Hannah Nuhfer, who spent this spring chasing, and eventually breaking, the New Jersey state discus record with a 184-0 at the South Jersey Group 3 Championships. She threw 53.46m on Thursday.
On the boys side, Simon Rosselli, the Mead, Washington senior who threw 225-6 at the Arcadia Invitational in April to rank fifth all-time in U.S. high school history, won the Men's Discus U20 title at 62.67m.
More Around Hayward Field
Claire Wetick, who broke the Tennessee all-time state record with a 13-8 clearance back in May, finished eighth in the Women's Pole Vault at 3.95m. South Dakota's Caelan Harland, fresh off clearing 18-3 to join the 18-foot club at the Drake Relays, finished fourth in the Men's Pole Vault at 5.42m
Luke Surface, the North Raleigh Christian Academy 8th grader who has spent the spring rewriting middle school distance records, finished eighth in the Boys 5000m Championship final in 14:25.88. The race was won by Ethan Locke, the Valor Prep Academy senior and Alabama signee who enters the summer ranked as the top 5000m runner in the country at 14:09.44. Surface's mark breaks Aidan Puffer's 14 Year Old World Record of 14:47.66 set in 2018.
In the Girls 5000m Championship, Delaney Reuter of Windsor, Colorado won in 16:20.32, a mark that met the World U20 standard. Cougar Elite TC-VA won the Girls DMR Championship in 11:44.33, and Great Strides TC-CO took the Boys DMR Championship in 10:04.59. Coastal Georgia TC-GA won the Mixed 4x400m Championship in 3:28.14.
Day one is in the books. Four more days remain in Eugene.
PHOTO CREDIT: JOSH KUTCHER
There is a version of this sport where siblings push each other for a season and one eventually pulls ahead. That is not what happened in Eugene on Thursday. Mia and Mariah Maxwell went 1-2 in a national final and both made the team that will be representing the USA in Track Town in August at the World U20 Championships.
It was just that kind of day at Hayward Field, the first of five, with more competition to come. Here is what happened on day one.
The Maxwell Twins Go 1-2
