Taylor Roe Wins 3,000 at NCAA Indoor Championships, Cowgirls Finish 18th

STILLWATER – Oklahoma State distance runner Taylor Roe took home her first NCAA Title in the women’s 3,000 Meters on Saturday night, capping off the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships in Birmingham, Ala.

Roe held serve in the middle of the pack before exploding to the lead with just under three laps remaining. She gapped the field for two laps before holding off NC State’s Katelyn Tuohy with an impressive kick in the last 60 Meters to hold on for the win.

“I just go with whatever feels right,” Roe said following the race. “I know Dave (Smith) has trust in me and I trust myself that my intuition is going to be the best for me.”

She became the fifth Cowgirl overall to win an indoor NCAA individual title and the first since Kaela Edwards won the indoor Mile in 2016. She is also the first OSU track & field or cross country athlete to win an individual national championship since Sinclaire Johnson won the outdoor 1,500 Meter championship in 2019.

“I thought she ran incredibly a poised, patient, strategically almost perfect race,” Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Dave Smith said. “We talked a lot about how to approach it and I think she executed the plan we came up with really well. We talked about getting to the front with 1,000 Meters to go and then never giving up and she certainly did that.”

Roe finished a perfect postseason in which she won three Big 12 championships in the DMR, Mile and 3,000 Meters before repeating as NCAA Champion in the 3,000.

Roe’s first-place finish also earned 10 points towards the team score, which put the Cowgirls inside the top 20 overall for the first time since 2016. It was also the fifth time in program history the Cowgirls scored in double digits in the team race and the 18th-place finish was the sixth highest in program history.

“I think the weekend in general was a good weekend,” Smith said. “We had a lot of young kids who had never been here before and this is the most competitive indoor meet in the world every year… I think we gained a lot of experience and had a good showing. The women ended up 18th overall which so overall a pretty good meet for us.”