EUGENE, Ore. – For Indiana athletes Allie Wilson and Charity Hufnagel, a new track and field season may ultimately lead them to a new destination: Paris.
In a truly shocking performance at the U.S. Olympic Trials on Monday night at Hayward Field, Wilson placed second in the 800 meters and Hufnagel won the high jump.
Wilson is guaranteed a place at the Paris Olympics, but technical issues mean Hufnagel may not be able to compete.
Cole Hocker breaks trial record:“I'm definitely going for the gold medal.”
Nia Akins won the 800m in 1 minute 57.36 seconds after reigning Olympic champion Assing Mu fell.
Wilson placed second in 1:58.32. The third place in the Olympic bracket was NCAA indoor and outdoor champion Juliette Whitaker of Stanford University, who finished in 1:58.45.
“Going into this race, I kept telling myself, ‘It’s just a race, it’s just a race, I’m just going to do what I always do,'” Wilson said. “Watching all the sports now, this is going to be totally different than anything I’ve ever done before.
“There are very few people in this world who can call themselves an Olympian, and I can't believe I'm one of them.”
Mr. Wilson, 28, was a high school soccer player who starred at tiny Monmouth University in New Jersey and was coached by Andrew Begley and Amy Yoder Begley at the Atlanta Track and Field Club. When Amy, a former Indiana Olympian in the 10,000 meters, moved to Indianapolis to become associate director of the distance program for USA Track and Field, Mr. Wilson came along.
As a result, she lost her sponsor. After moving to Broad Ripple, she worked as a babysitter to make ends meet. After winning the U.S. Indoor Championships in February, she signed a contract with Nike.
“I've made a lot of mistakes over the years and I've learned from them,” she said, “and I think I put all those lessons to use in today's race. It finally worked out.”
Wilson's head coach, Andrew Begley, a three-time state champion at Westview High School and later an Arkansas state representative, said she and Amy “dreamed of” one day becoming Olympians.
“She played a big role in helping me get there,” Wilson said.
Hufnagel, a Ball State University transfer to the University of Kentucky, ended the longest-running U.S. women's high jump streak: Vashti Cunningham had won 13 consecutive indoor and outdoor national titles.
Hufnagel cleared her personal best of 6 feet 4 1/4 inches on her first attempt, just 12 days earlier when she was 12 years old.Number They competed in the NCAA Championships at the same venue.
NCAA indoor champion Rachel Glenn of Arkansas also placed second at 6 feet 4 1/4 inches.
Cunningham, ranked third at 6-foot-3 1/4, was a 2019 world bronze medalist and the 2016 world indoor champion. She is the daughter of former NFL quarterback Randall Cunningham.
Because Hufnagel does not meet the 6-foot-5-and-a-half standard and has a low world ranking, she will not be able to make the Olympic team unless she exceeds that standard in another event before Sunday.
Former Charity Griffith, 23, of Rushville, called herself a “mediocre high school athlete” who never scored a point at the state meet and ran distances from 200 meters to 3,200 meters.
The scene reminded him of last year in Austin, Texas, when he represented Ball State University in surprising fashion and won the NCAA title.
“It definitely reminded me a little bit of Austin,” Hufnagel said. “I'd been injured leading up to this point, but I knew every step was slowly coming back together and I was starting to get my rhythm back again. It's honestly just a lesson and a test that God has taught me so many times.”
At this year's NCAAs, she finished seventh in the heptathlon. At the SEC meet, she placed second in the heptathlon and fourth in the high jump.
In the Olympic Trials heptathlon, Notre Dame's Jaydyn O'Brien, a two-time NCAA indoor pentathlon champion, was seventh with 6,108 points. Ball State's Jenelle Rogers was 10th.Number 5,969 results.
Competing in Thursday's 3,000-meter steeplechase final were Notre Dame's Olivia Markezich, an NCAA state finalist who placed third in the second semifinal with a time of 9:26.67, and Zionsville's Angelina Ellis, a Butler University graduate who placed fifth in the first semifinal with a time of 9:33.11.
Contact IndyStar correspondent David Woods at 1-800-464-4488.email addressFollow me on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
