2025 USATF Indoor Championships: Observations on Day One

This Ocean Breeze Athletics Complex is hosting the USATF Indoor Championships for 2025 on February 22-23, 2025. The facility is one of the finest in the world, and as someone who has been to indoor meetings from Goteborg, Sweden, to Doha, Qatar, reasonable, accessible indoor facilities are hard to come by.

The crowd was okay on Saturday, with the staunch fans, Track Moms, athletes, coaches, and sports curious. The problem, USATF does not promote their national championships, except in the most rudementary ways. In 2019, RunBlogRun worked with USATF to build interest in the Ocean Breeze AC event that year, but USATF did not even respond to offers to create interest.

USATF has some financial issues, with a loss of $5.6 million, which seems to be from the 2022 World Champs and pandemic costs.

Here are my observations on day 1:

1. The inclusion of the youth events was critical. On day one, most fans for the first half of the day were Track Moms and Dads and families. In chatting with a Parks and Recs guard, we agreed how great it is to see families using the Ocean Breeze AC.
2. Congrats to Chase Jackson who won the Women’s shot put in 19.65m, with Maggie Ewen in second in 18.86m, and Jackie Ramsey in 18.51m. What frustrates me , is that with no big screen, fans did not see the shot put at all, and due to USATF budget issues, no large screen to show off our throwing prowess. Chase Jackson has thorw 20.24m AR recently. She is a true throws goddess!

3. Both the men and women had their 3,000m race walks on Saturday. Emmanuel Corvera won the Men’s in 11:57.89. The women’s was won by Lauren Harris in 13:23.86. The racewalks are one of the oldest traditions in Olympic sports and athletics.
4. James Carter, on his last leap, won the Triple Jump in a PB of 16.68m! He surpassed Richard Robinson in 16.67m and Donald Scott in 16.62m.
5. Monae Nichols won on her last jump in the long jump, taking the title in 6.73m. Claire Bryant was second in 6.72m, and Olympic medalist in the LJ and TJ, Jasmine Jones, took third in 6.66m, a distance she equalled twice in her series.
6. Daniel Haugh won the weight throw in 25.11m, a big throw and world leader. Only problem is,  no other country does compete in the weight throw.
7. The women’s 3,000 meters was a great race. Shelby Houlihan, just back from a 4 year drug ban, which she fought every day, was competing, having just run 4:20 for the mile and 8:31 for…