Army West Point Athletics
Army West Point
Patriot League Outdoor Championships
Women’s Track and Field Claims Patriot League Title for First Time in 16 Years
May 03, 2025 | Women's Track and Field
Worcester, Mass. — Army West Point Women's Track and Field made history on Friday and Saturday, finishing first at the Patriot League Outdoor Track and Field Championship, earning the team's first title in 16 years.
Army West Point's women garnered 215.5 points to claim their first title in 16 years, with Boston U finishing behind in second and Navy finishing in third. The Black Knights also earned seven first-place titles to claim the title.
The first title winner was Charlotte Richman, who won the 10,000m run with a 36:55.35 final time. Louisa Diamond finished the same place right behind Richman in second.
One of the shining stars of the meet was Zoe Eggleston, who claimed her first Patriot League title in the heptathlon with 5056 total points. Highlights from Eggleston's victory include finishing first in the 200m dash, first in the 800m run and second in the 100m hurdles.
Claire Lewis was another first-place winner in the 3,000m steeplechase, finishing with a final time of 10:23.69. Melissa Jachim and Joanna Halfhill also earned top-four finishes in the event, finishing third and fourth respectively.
Emily Fink earned another throwing accomplishment, finishing first in the shot put. Fink earned a final 16.79m (55' 1"), setting a new Patriot League Championship meet record. Jordan Hecht also added a second-place finish in the event.
Zoe Whaley continued the first-place finishes in the high jump, earning the gold medal in the event with a 1.72m (5' 7 ¾") final mark.
Sophia Dykstra added the sixth first-place finish for the Black Knights, earning the top mark in the discus. Dykstra finished the meet with a 52.05m (170" 9') final mark, setting a new meet record alongside Fink.
The final gold medal finish for Army came in the final event of the meet, and 4x400m relay.
The relay team, consisting of Hannah Andrews, Ever Elegon, Faith Kibbe and Skye Chambers, finished the race with a final time of 3:41.15, also setting a meet record.
Alongside the first-place finishes, The Black Knights also saw several second place finishes, all finishes earning athletes Second-Team All-Patriot League honors, with first place finishers earning First-Team All-Patriot League. Those include Skye Chambers in the 800m, Mikayla Cheney in the 1,500m, Louisa Diamond in the 5,000m, her second silver medal of the meet, Kiana Emerson in the hammer throw and Olivia Hancock in the discus.
With all the top two finishes, Army head coach Mike Smith received the Patriot League's Women's Coach of the Year honor.
Up next, the Black Knights run their first outdoor meet in West Point at Shea Stadium this season at the West Point Twilight, with the meet starting on May 8.
Hear From Coach Smith:
On Monday of this week, coach Mike Ashton received a text from our women's team captain Zoe Eggleston, '25. It read simply, "Full Send. Let's beat 'em ". More about that in a moment….
In April, after a narrow loss in the Star Meet, two of our women's captains stood in front of a very disappointed Army women's track and field team and poured out their hearts in two very emotional speeches. Sophia Dykstra ('25) and Zoe Eggleston ('25) have never won anything as a member of the Army track and field team. No star meets, and no conference titles, and they were in pain after suffering another agonizing defeat in Annapolis. They said the things we have echoed as a program over and over again. Don't give up, keep trying, hard work pays off. They were looking in the rearview mirror at four years of hard work toward team goals with nothing to show for it. They were grieving. Grieving at the thought of a career of "almost" and "get 'em next time". The next time came today and those same women "got 'em all". The Army women won the Patriot League Women's Outdoor Track and Field title today for the first time since 2008. There is always a story behind a championship. This coach's corner is going to be a difficult one. Not because I don't know what to talk about or what to say; but rather because there is so much to talk about. We won this meet handily and we won it with contributions from every corner of our program. We dominated the throwing events. We scored the most points in the distance events. We had plebes surprise us by scoring a few points and we had veterans score over 20 points. Our women did it all. I always talk to our team about the "ebb" and "flow" of a championship. Rarely does everything go the way you dope it out on paper and true to that idea, we slipped up early on day one, but after that, our women were flawless. It was nothing but "flow" from that point on and it was a torrent of success. I can't think of an event where we underperformed. We were nearly perfect and that almost never happens. Our stars got the job done but so did everyone else. We entered this meet to win it and we took some risks to do it. And although those were calculated gambles, they were risks that should they fail, could cost us dearly. We won every one of those gambles. So when Zoe sent that text to coach Ashton on Monday. I knew that she was locked in and that we were doing the right thing in putting her in the heptathlon, 100 hurdles and 400 hurdles. The heptathlon is a grueling seven-event march over two days. Zoe had the top mark in the conference coming into the weekend, but we knew two other women could win it. So by adding rounds of the 100 hurdles and 400 hurdles to Zoe's meet calendar, we were putting the heptathlon points at risk. We asked her what she thought she could do, and her reply was, "Full Send." And that is exactly what she did. She won the heptathlon today with a point total of 5056 moving her to No. 2 on the Army all-time list. She sat in third place going into the 800m run which is the final event of the Hep. You are rewarded with 14 points per second in the Hep 800 and Zoe trailed first place by 158 points. That meant she needed to finish 12 seconds ahead of the current leader to win the title. We knew that the Holy Cross athlete was capable of 2:29 or 2:30 for the 800 so we knew that Zoe would need to at least run 2:16 to safely win the title. When the gun went off she went right to the front and never looked back. With 200m to go, she was all alone hammering the pace. She closed the last 200 in 35 seconds to finish in 2:14 easily outdistancing the field of 13 runners and easily outdistancing the Holy Cross runner who crossed the line in 2:30. At that moment, Zoe was physically spent but she was emotionally on a huge high and immediately forward focused. Later in the meet, she finished 5th in the 400 intermediate hurdles with a new personal best of 62.38 seconds moving her to number 10 on the Army all-time list. It was a remarkable performance from one of our leaders and the 14 points she scored were an important part of our 215-point team tally… And that was just the beginning. The other risks that we took came with our distance runners. The oval races are less predictable than the field events when it comes to outcomes. Too much can happen when athletes go head to head in distance races and the fatigue associated with those events can be limiting when setting up a meet calendar with multiple races. Charlotte Richman '26 has no limits. She is a threat in any race from the 1500 meters to the 10,000m and she is a relentless competitor, a fighter until the end. So when we were trying to figure out what to enter her in at the meet this weekend, we tossed the idea around of putting her in everything. The 10k, the 1500, and the 5k. 45 laps around the oval, 11 miles of racing. I have never even considered that triple before. But Charlotte was up for it and the rest of the conference had to deal with it. Charlotte loves to run. So, the prospect of all that running was something she embraced. Friday morning, she won the 10k in a tactical race that both she and Louisa Diamond '27 controlled and dominated. Later in the day she came back to race the 1500-meter preliminary and ran well enough to qualify for the Saturday final. After that race, she got about 24 hours of recovery and then came out today to compete in the 1500m final. She claimed third in that race in a new personal best time of 4:18.01 a two-second personal best and the 2nd fastest time ever run by an Army woman. Then, in one of the last events of the meet, she claimed another third-place finish in the women's 5k. I don't any athletes that could withstand the demands of the race calendar of Charlotte Richman this weekend. She wasn't phased by any of it. She has the kind of tough that you read about, and you are amazed. If she has limits, we have not found them. She evokes comparisons with everything gritty and gutsy. She has a seemingly limitless tolerance for pain. It is extraordinary and so is she. She carried our team this weekend. It was an incredible performance and the 22 points that she scored were the most by any woman on our team. She was glad to do it. She is the ultimate team player. We have team meetings on every Monday. On the Monday after we lost the star meet, Mikayla Cheney ('27) approached me to discuss what she and we needed to do to win. "I just want to win. What do I need to do for us to win". I didn't answer her directly at that moment because I was caught off guard by the question. In my mind, we are always doing what we need to do to win. But what she wanted to know was what more could she do to help the team win. Losing didn't sit well with her and although she is a point-making machine for our team, her points have never been enough to overcome our deficits. "I will do whatever you think is best. I just want to win". Coaching Mikayla is easy. She will do whatever we ask. So, when we started discussing what events she would compete in at the conference championship, she was up for anything and everything. So, we put her in everything. It was a huge risk. We doubled her in the 1500 and 800 which both had prelims on Friday and then we anchored her on the 4x800m relay on Friday night. That meant she would run three races on Friday before scoring any individual points. We debated putting her on that relay for days. We knew the relay would benefit. But the risk to the 1500m and 800m point totals on Saturday was significant because the difference between places is often close and I wasn't sure how she would recover from the demands of the previous day. The decision to put her on the relay came down to competitive grit; which Mikayla possesses in excess. I just felt like she would show up no matter what. The gamble paid off. She made the final in both the 800 and 1500 and then anchored our 4x 800m relay to a new Academy record and new Service Academy record. The relay leg was a heroic run by Mikayla. She got the baton in the lead and put everything she had into the race only giving way in the last 50 meters. Our runner-up time of 8:39.91 set a new Academy record and a new Service Academy record. Today, in the 1500 final, she challenged for the win only coming up short in the final meters but running a time equal to the best time she has ever run 4:16.15. In the 800 final she secured a 5th place finish in 2:07.76 (the 2nd best time of her life). She assumed an incredible workload this weekend and was rewarded with a team title.
Louisa Diamond ('27) was a bridesmaid twice for us this weekend. The 16 points that she scored in finishing runner-up in both the 10k and the 5k was second only on our team in total points to Charlotte Richman's haul. Louisa is still surprised by what she has been able to accomplish on the track. She is willing to do whatever it takes for the team to be successful. She did that in the fall on our championship women's cross-country team and again this weekend in impressive fashion. Emily Fink ('25) showed us what determination is all about this weekend. She was devastated on Friday when she fouled out in the hammer throw. She could have made excuses for what happened but she didn't. She just felt like she had let the team down and it was eating away at her. I could tell that she was shouldering a tremendous amount of guilt, so I approached her and told her that she had to put the result behind her, she was too important to our team outcome. She had to rebound for the shot put on day two. We needed her to be Emily Fink. We all know what that means. So does the rest of the Patriot League. There is nothing anyone in the league can do about Emily Fink. So when she stepped into the ring for her 2nd throw, she sent a message with it. She tossed the shot 16.79 meters and won the event. That mark set a new meet record, a new Academy record, and a new service academy record. She now owns Service Academy records in the indoor and outdoor shot and the hammer throw. She has elevated our entire program with her performance, her work ethic, and her leadership. Yesterday her teammates picked her up and today she carried them on her shoulders. Jordan Hecht ('27) was the runner-up in the shot completing a 1-2 sweep for us. Jordan's third-place finish in the discus when added to her shot total brought us 14 points. The discus was easily our most dominating event of the weekend. We swept the top four places. The usual suspects did the damage but there were some nice surprises that added to the 29-point total in the event. Sophia Dykstra '25, set the meet record and a new Academy record with her winning toss of 52.05 meters. She signaled last weekend at the Penn Relays that she was on the verge of some big marks. Today when we needed the big throw, she got it done. Sophia delivered an impassioned speech to our team on Thursday night in advance of the championship. This meet was her last chance to claim a team title and the thought of her career ending with disappointment was too much to bear. She will never forget the feeling she had in winning this meet. Olivia Hancock ('25) (second) and Emilia Labruyere ('28) (fourth) completed the top four places for us. This was Olivia's best finish at a conference championship. She has been a discus fixture for our program for 4 years and today in her final conference meet she not only secured the 2nd place finish but set a new personal best of 47.59 meters ranking her No. 9 on the Army all-time list. Other champions for us on the day included Zoe Whaley '26 in the high jump. Zoe won the conference indoor high jump with a personal best of 1.71 meters and bested that today with a new best of 1.72 meters. She now ranks #4 on the all-time list in the high jump. Zoe gave us a bit of a scare early in the competition with some misses at some lower bars but then she got rolling. She was down on misses until the end but came up big on the 1.72 bar, clearing it on her 2nd attempt to secure the win. She told me that she was "locked in" today and that focus brought home the title. Zoe performs best on the big stage. She entered the meet with an outdoor personal best of 1.65m. She ended the day with a 7 cm improvement. That isn't normal. The big stage, the pressure, and the chance to help the team propelled her today. Most of our women competed like they were possessed this weekend. It is very common for our teams to have huge performance gains at the Star Meet and then hope to improve over the remainder of the season. But this weekend, the women took it to another level. The performance gains were not isolated to a particular event group, we got special results from everyone. We had two other champions on the day. Claire Lewis ('26) won her first-ever Patriot League title in the women's 3000m steeplechase (10:23.69). It was the best performance of her West Point career eclipsing her 4.2 GPA in its significance. She shadowed the leader for the first 6 laps and then at the bell, she took the lead and opened up a big enough gap to take the win. A year ago, Claire struggled with some injury issues and missed the entire outdoor season. So, today's result was especially satisfying for her. She led our team to a 1,3,4 finish and 21-point haul in the steeple. The final event of the day was the women's 4x400m relay. We had the top time coming into the meet, but I felt like we were the underdog. The team that we put out there had run 3:45.65 at the Star Meet for the win in April but struggled to match that performance at any other point in the season. Hannah Andrews ('25) ran the leadoff leg for us and handed off in 2nd with a 56.7 split. It was the best-recorded split of her career. Ever Elegon ('25) took the baton from Hannah and took off like a rocket around the first turn and down the backstretch. She was hammering the pace and eating up ground on the leader. She split 54.1. At the second exchange, we were still in 2nd and Faith Kibbe ('28) got the baton just behind the leader and shadowed her until the final turn when she jumped her and brought home the baton in 55.1 handing off to Skye Chambers ('27) on the anchor with a slight lead. Skye had run a big personal best in the women's 800 (2:06.00) in her runner-up performance earlier in the day so she was feeling pretty confident going into the relay. She took the baton with about a 10-meter lead. I don't know if she ran scared or if she ran possessed but whatever it was, it worked. There was a moment in the final turn when it looked like she might be overtaken, but with 50 meters to go, she surged again and left no doubt as to how the race was going to finish. Her split of 54.5 brought us home to the win and a new meet record, Academy record, and Service Academy record time of 3:41.15. It was 2 seconds faster than we have ever run. I thought we had a shot to win, and I thought we might be able to get our school record, but 3:41 was not something I saw coming. Those women were not going to lose today.
We are a good track and field team. We have been good for some time now, but we just haven't had enough depth to challenge for a team title. Today I thought we might win the meet by a narrow margin or lose by a narrow margin it was a tossup. There was no scenario that I had on paper where we would win by more than a handful of points. And yet we won by 48.5 points. It was an incredible display of execution, accountability, and relentless competition. And we spread the wealth. Everyone got into the action and we never took our foot off the gas. We have more work to do. Now we have to take this momentum to the NCAA level. I think we can.
Players Mentioned
