By John Frierson
Staff Writer

One of the greatest years in Georgia Athletics history wrapped up last Saturday in Eugene, Ore., where the top-ranked women’s track and field team blew away the pack to win the NCAA Outdoor Championships. It was the fourth national championship by a Bulldog team since February, tying the school record set in 1999.

Georgia’s women’s tennis team, the NCAA runner-up last spring, swept the two national championships this year, winning the ITA National Indoor Championships in February and the NCAA Championships in May. Women’s tennis has now won eight national titles, and the equestrian program also captured its eighth this spring, marching through the bracket as the No. 7 seed to win the NCEA national championship in Ocala, Fla.

Bulldog teams have won seven national championships — football (2), women’s tennis (2), equestrian (2) and women’s track — since Josh Brooks took over as J. Reid Parker Director of Athletics in 2021.

“As we reflect back, I am extremely proud of our student-athletes and coaches for what they accomplished,” Brooks said. “Winning a national title is not easy, so to have four of them in one year is remarkable.

“We have some great days ahead, but it is important for everyone within Georgia Athletics to pause and be proud of what they have done. This could not have happened without the tremendous support and alignment with our university partners. I am so thankful for President Jere W. Morehead’s leadership and the work of all our coaches, staff and student-athletes.” 

After winning the program’s first SEC Outdoor Championships since 2006, the women’s track team arrived at Oregon’s Hayward Field as the heavy favorite to win the national championship. And the Bulldogs delivered, winning four individual NCAA titles and scoring 73 points as a team, well ahead of second-place USC’s 47.

The Georgia women (and men) had finished second at the NCAA Indoors in March. Because there is no hammer throw, javelin or 400-meter hurdles indoors, the women were at their best in the outdoor season, Director of Track & Field Caryl Smith Gilbert said.

“We knew we’re an outdoor team, so come on March, right?” said Smith Gilbert, who was named the SEC Coach of the Year.

Smith Gilbert, who won two NCAA titles as the USC women’s coach, said this one was particularly special for her because “the whole team did it.” Georgia won individual titles in the 400 meters (Aaliyah Butler), hammer throw (Stephanie Ratcliffe, who also won the NCAA title in 2023 while at Harvard), high jump (Elena Kulichenko, a three-time NCAA champion) and captured the meet’s final race, the 4×400 relay (Michelle Smith, Dejanea Oakley, Sydney Harris and Butler).

The Bulldogs also scored points in several other events, including a second-place finish in the javelin (Manuela Rotundo) and the 400 (Oakley), and a third in the 400 hurdles (Smith).

“I think it was really emotional,” Smith said of celebrating the team title. “I was looking at my teammates and I’m like, Wow, we all did this. We all worked to this point and we actually did it.”

Earlier in the year, at the NCAA Indoor Championships, Will Floyd won the 400 meters and was part of the quartet, along with Shemar Chambers, Xai Ricks and Ervin Pearson, who won the NCAA title in the 4×400 relay. Floyd, a transfer from Stanford, was also named the SEC Indoor Men’s Newcomer of the Year. Smith, a freshman, was named the SEC Outdoor Newcomer of the Year.

Track and field’s men and women won numerous other SEC events and honors during the season, including Indoor and Outdoor long jump titles by Jayden Keys, who was named the SEC Outdoor Freshman Field Athlete of the Year.

Georgia’s individual successes weren’t confined to the track. In November, women’s tennis senior Dasha Vidmanova won the NCAA singles championship in Waco, Texas. Vidmanova and partner Aysegul Mert had won the NCAA doubles title the previous spring, and with the women’s team’s NCAA crown this May, Vidmanova became just the third player in collegiate women’s tennis history to win all three NCAA titles in her career.

In the pool, Bulldog redshirt senior Luca Urlando, a 2024 Olympian, won the NCAA title in the men’s 200-yard butterfly. On the women’s side, Abby McCulloh, the 2024 NCAA champion in the 1,650 freestyle and a seven-time All-American during her great career, was named the SEC H. Boyd McWhorter Women’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Vidmanova was named the ITA National Player of the Year, ITA Senior Player of the Year, SEC Player of the Year, and she was the Honda Award winner for tennis. Georgia women’s tennis coach Drake Bernstein was named both the SEC Coach of the Year and the ITA National Coach of the Year.

Women’s tennis also won the SEC tournament for the third year in a row, and transfer Sofia Rojas was named the SEC Newcomer of the Year.

“It’s not about me, it’s about Georgia, and that’s really the best part of it all,” Bernstein said last month. “It’s that we get to do this — the entire staff, the players — that we got to do this for something that’s not just ourselves. It’s bigger than ourselves. Sure, this is an accomplishment that we’ll be proud of for the rest of our lives, but the fact that we got to bring this back to Georgia is the coolest part of it all.”

Butler, a 2024 Olympian who won NCAA Outdoor titles in the 400 and 4×400 relay, as well as SEC Indoor and Outdoor titles in the 400, was named the SEC Indoor Runner of the Year and is also a finalist for the Honda Award for track and field. She won the 400 by lowering her school and personal record to 49.26 seconds, and Oakley took second place with a time of 49.65, also a personal record. Between the two of them, they ran the five fastest 400 times in the country this year.

“That was perfect,” Smith Gilbert said of the 1-2 finish, “because they both ran (their fastest times ever). It wouldn’t matter to me how they placed, as long as they both got a P.R.”

Georgia’s equestrian team lost to Texas A&M in the semifinals of the SEC Championships in Mill Spring, N.C., but headed to the NCEA Championships confident that its best was still to come, head coach Meghan Boenig said after the season.

“Even after that loss, I think all of us just took a breath and were like, Bring it,” said Boenig, who was named the SEC Coach of the Year and NCEA Coach of the Year. Graduate Sophia Pilla was named the SEC Flat Rider of the Year and NCEA Flat Rider of the Year.

At the NCEA Championships, the seventh-seeded Bulldogs knocked off second-seeded Auburn, sixth-seeded A&M and top-seeded SMU to win the title.

“I think the real magic was everybody’s belief, everyone’s optimism, and everybody’s ability to just turn to the person behind you and say, I got your back no matter what,” Boenig said.

Georgia’s athletic year got off to a strong start with the football team winning the SEC championship, beating Texas, 22-19, in overtime. Then came a very successful spring in a variety of sports that included the four team national championships and nine individual NCAA champions, the most since 2017. Georgia’s 52 all-time national championships are tied for second in the SEC.

 

Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files.