By John Frierson
Staff Writer

Aaliyah Butler already had the two big things she wanted at last week’s NCAA Women’s Outdoor Track & Field Championships, the individual 400-meter national title and the team title for the Georgia women. The last prize, in the event’s final race Saturday night, she wanted that for her 4×400 relay teammates.

The Bulldogs had an insurmountable lead in the team competition heading into the final relay at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., and Georgia’s 4×400 quartet of Butler, Michelle Smith, Dejanea Oakley and Sydney Harris could have taken four victory laps. Instead, the four sprinted their way to another national championship with a time of 3:23.62.

“Knowing that we already had (the team title) in the bag, and knowing that we didn’t have to score points at all to win the (team) championship, we still had other teammates on the relay that we knew could win,” said Butler, who made the U.S. Olympic team last summer on that same track. “Just giving them a chance to be a national champion individually was good.”

Before the final race, Georgia Director of Track & Field Caryl Smith Gilbert gave the racers the chance to select the order in which they ran. She wanted them to decide how they closed out the program’s first NCAA Outdoor team title.

“I said, ‘You know what, guys, I trust you,'” Smith Gilbert said.

That trust was rewarded as Oakley, Smith, Harris and then Butler sprinted to the fastest time in school history and the eighth-fastest collegiate time ever.

“I thought it’s a great order if they decide to really run,” assistant coach Karim Abdel Wahab said. “Sometimes you don’t know how motivated they are, because they’d already won the national championship. So the incredible thing is that they all ran really well and broke the school record and won the national championship.”

“Just going out there knowing you’re a national champion as a team, I think really brought the energy towards the (4×400), which then we were able to go and win,” Harris said, adding, “I would say be able to run free was one of the biggest things. I think that really helped us win.”

At the end of the meet, Georgia finished with 73 points, well ahead of second-place USC’s 47.

Butler entered Saturday’s individual 400 final as the favorite, having posted the fastest time in the country this spring. In fact, heading into the final, she was the only woman to break 50 seconds this year. She was soon joined by a teammate in the sub-50 category.

Butler won the 400 title by lowering her school record to 49.26, and Oakley took second place with a time of 49.65. Between the two of them, they have the five fastest 400 times in the country this year and seven of the top 10.

“She’s grown a lot, and she cares about the team,” Smith Gilbert said of Butler. “She was the one at SECs who said ‘It is time to win, guys.’ She doesn’t talk a lot, hardly ever, so when she talks, it means something.”

At the SEC Outdoor meet, Butler also won the 400 and helped the women capture their first conference title since 2006. Georgia’s women won three individual titles at the SEC Outdoors — Butler, Lianna Davidson in the javelin and Stephanie Ratcliffe in the hammer throw — and then won four titles at the NCAA Outdoors. Along with Butler’s 400 title and the 4×400 title, Ratcliffe won the hammer and high jumper Elena Kulichenko won her third straight (two outdoor, one indoor) NCAA title.

While coaching the USC women, Smith Gilbert won NCAA Outdoor titles in 2018 and 2021. She said this one was different.

“I feel more happy,” she said.

Why?

“Because the whole team did it,” she said.

For Smith, who placed third in the 400 hurdles, she said the whole experience at the meet was special.

“From start to finish, it wasn’t real,” Smith said. “It was pretty cool because I got to spend all that time with my teammates, and we worked so hard to get to this point.”

Georgia’s track national championship was the athletic department’s fourth in 2025. The women’s tennis team won the ITA National Indoor Championships in February and followed that with a dominating run through the NCAA tournament in May. In April, Georgia’s equestrian team also captured the program’s eighth NCEA national championship.

The four team titles won in 2025 match the bountiful spring of 1999, when women’s swimming, gymnastics, men’s golf and men’s tennis all won NCAA championships. Overall, Georgia has now won 52 team national championships, tied for second in SEC history. 

 

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.