By David Melly
June 12, 2024
If you started watching track and field for the first time ever on Thursday, you’d probably think that Ole Miss sprinter McKenzie Long was an unbeatable force who’d been at the top of the sport for years as she swiftly and decisively picked up three NCAA titles in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m in the space of a few hours. With winning times of 10.82w, 21.83, and 42.34, you’d also think she has always been in the conversation for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team or even the podium in Paris.
But it hasn’t always been that way. Long has been a contender in the 200m on the collegiate level for a while now, with runner-up finishes indoors in 2024 and outdoors in 2023, but she didn’t make the final at USAs last year. As recently as 2022, she didn’t even make it out of NCAA regionals in either event. She’d never clocked a wind-legal sub-11 second 100m until three weeks ago, and now she has the #1 200m and #6 100m marks in the world this year.
So how’d we get here? At the risk of overusing a bad pun, it’s been a “long” road. The 23-year-old Long began her collegiate career at NC State in 2018, and after a COVID-induced racing gap and a transfer, she ended up at Ole Miss where things really started clicking. The wider track world started taking notice when she ran a wind-aided 10.80 at Texas Relays to kick off the 2023 outdoor season and picked up an SEC 200m title in her conference debut, but the pre-NCAA hype didn’t quite pan out last year. Long also lost her mother unexpectedly in February and still managed to finish second at NCAAs indoors a few weeks later in a season’s best 22.51.
Double sprint champs aren’t uncommon at NCAAs – Long is the fourth in the last decade – but it’s quite rare to see a fifth- (or sixth-)year senior atop the podium in the short events. Hotshot 100m/200m runners rarely stick around in the NCAA when lucrative pro contracts are dangled; the only fourth-year to win either event in the last decade was Aleia Hobbs in the 100m in 2018 (then-freshman Anglerne Annelus won the 200m that year). Long’s story isn’t just about improvement and overcoming personal tragedy; it’s about sticking things out and trusting the process. She didn’t wake up one morning a champion; it took two schools, one pandemic, and just as much losing as winning.
Long’s narrative is still unfolding – there’s a niche, little-known track meet called the U.S. Olympic Trials coming up in a few weeks where she’ll surely be aiming to extend her summer season into August with a trip to France. And when non-collegiate track fans tune in, it’ll be easy to look at “3x NCAA champ” and her shiny new PBs and assume that she’s the Goliath to someone else’s David. But McKenzie Long is just the kind of feel-good underdog story we love to root for at every level.
Here’s hoping we’re not done cheering for her just yet.
David Melly
David began contributing to CITIUS in 2018, and quickly cemented himself as an integral part of the team thanks to his quick wit, hot takes, undying love for the sport and willingness to get yelled at online.
