LA CROSSE, WI – The University of Rochester women's track and field team had a strong first day of competition at the 2026 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships, securing one All-America award while seeing two other runners advancing out of preliminary heats during nationals action on Thursday.
 
In addition, one URochester school record fell, another was missed by .01 seconds and the 4x400 meter relay squad finished two spots higher than their seed during the Yellowjackets final action of the evening.
 
The national championships are being held at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
 
Action started on the afternoon with the discus throw and junior Aimee Oszer securing All-America honors for a 12th place finish in the event. Oszer improved in each of her three throws, starting with a 37.84 meter mark. Her second round distance was 39.01 meters, before moving up to 12th overall after posting a best throw of 43.48 meters on Thursday.
 
Up next, junior Nora Chen ran in the 400-meter hurdle preliminaries and earned one of the automatic qualifying spots into the Saturday finals after placing first in her heat with a time of 59.62 seconds. Chen ended with the second-fastest time in the prelims and saw her time just miss her own school record by .01 seconds.
 
Graduate student Molly FitzGibbons was next to take to the track, competing in the 3000-meter steeplechase. Competing in the last meet of her career, FitzGibbons established a new personal-best in the event, running 10:30.06, also breaking her own URochester school record set a couple weeks ago at the Liberty League Championships.
 
FitzGibbons qualified on time for the finals on Friday in ninth place, and will be one of 12 runners in the championship race. The graduate student's previous best time in the steeplechase was 10:30.57, also coming at NCAA's back in 2022, when she was competing for Williams College.
 
URochester's final event of day one at the NCAA Championships was the 4x400 meter relay team of Raquella Casserino, Lizzie Merrill, Chen and Eva Ciuffetelli. That group started out strong with Casserino's opening leg putting the Yellowjackets near the front, handing off the baton in second.
 
After Merrill's leg, the Yellowjackets had a time of 1:56.85, ranking seventh in the field. Chen had the 'Jackets third leg and saw the team get back within striking distance of the leaders with a strong 55.18 second split. The handoff went to Ciuffetelli who came home in 57.42 seconds, holding UR steady in seventh place with a final time of 3:49.44.
 
The group entered nationals with the 16th best time in Division III, but ultimately ranked 14th in the field, improving two spots from their seed.
 
On Friday's day two, the Yellowjackets have Oszer competing in the shot put, Chen running in the preliminaries of the 100 meter hurdles and FitzGibbons wrapping up action in the finals of the steeplechase.