INDIANAPOLIS -- Completing a "surreal" 24 hours, Mount Holyoke junior Elle Rimando was officially invited Friday evening to compete in the triple jump at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Rimando will be the Lyons' first competitor at Nationals since 2015.
"I am just stoked that I have this opportunity to get to compete at Nationals," she said. "Not to be cliche, but I've dreamt about this since starting my college career. I am thrilled to have this experience to travel and compete with some of the top athletes in the nation and to represent Mount Holyoke at this level."
After notching two personal records among her first four attempts, Rimando hopped, skipped and jumped 39 feet and 1 inch on her sixth attempt, breaking sophomore teammate Ioanna Tsoni's (Athens, Greece) team record set less than two weeks earlier by 15 centimeters. That attempt put her in a tie for 20th place in the final national rankings, and the NCAA invites the top 22 athletes in each event to the NCAA Championships.
The 2025 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships will take place at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio, May 22-24. The women's triple jump trials and finals will begin Saturday, May 24 at 1:45pm. The meet will be livestreamed at ncaa.com.
Rimando will be Mount Holyoke's first NCAA Track & Field Championship competitor since Camille Coklow ran the 100 meters in 2015.
Rimando's qualification for Natinoals stems from her would-be final attempt of the season yesterday at the UMass-Amherst Last Chance Meet, the culmination of a remarkable sequence of events -- beginning with the fact that attending the UMass meet was almost an afterthought.
"I was planning on staying on campus because I wanted to see all my friends graduate, and Coach Jay [Hartshorn] just brought it up as an opportunity to do both jumps again. I was basically treating this as a meet where I could end with a strong performance and potentially some PRs. It was a small meet, so the pressure was really low when we got there, and [teammates] Aria (Mallare) and Addison (Heintz) were just there to support me, so I was feeling positive and having a fun time with them.
"My opening jump was the best opener I've had all season, and I knew it was a good sign," Rimando recalled. "After all these years, I've finally been able to fix my third phase form with Coach Jay, and I've seen a lot of improvement."
On her third attempt, Rimando went 11.52 meters, a new personal record.
"I hit that 11.52 and I was so excited because it was a college PR, but also closer to my high school PR, which I've been striving so hard for," she said. "I knew I could just keep improving after that first PR."
On attempt No. 4, Rimando upped her mark to 11.76 meters.
"That was the same exact mark Ioanna had at D3s, so I was just thinking about how amazing that progression was, and I was hoping I had a bigger jump in me," Rimando said. "I could tell these jumps were feeling a lot better because it actually felt like I was in the air longer."
After a foul on her fifth attempt, Rimando delivered the best triple jump of her career, on what would have been the final moment of the year for Mount Holyoke Athletics. At 11.91 meters, she soon learned the jump had punched her ticket to NCAAs.
"It honestly didn't feel like the furthest jump out of my sequence," she said, "but the official said it was 11.91, and me and everyone else freaked out. I don't think I've actually seen someone jump for joy like Coach Jay in that moment. I was just so excited because I honestly was not expecting it."
"Being able to accomplish this has just proved that all the hard work and dedication to improving have paid off."
Tsoni also earned an invitation to compete at NCAAs in the long jump, where she is tied for 13th in Division III, but she will not be making the trip to Ohio.
