‘The Pinnacle of Athletic Success’
The Colby women’s 4x400-meter relay team won a national title and set a school record at the NCAA Division III Indoor Championships
The Colby women’s track and field team is small, but it’s mighty—and now it’s celebrating.
The women’s 4×400-meter relay team became national champions last weekend at the NCAA Division III Indoor Championships at Nazareth University in Rochester, N.Y. In addition to winning the national title, the team set a new Colby record.
Athletes Kaitlyn Ewald ’27, Fiona Mejico ’25, Kristina Pizzi ’25, and Tally Zeller ’26 captured the championship on Saturday with a time of 3:45.95. Their time was nearly two seconds faster than they had run during the preliminary round the day before.
The race is widely considered to be one of the hardest events in track and field because it requires both speed and endurance, and it is demanding physically as well as mentally. In Rochester, the Colby runners each gave their all during their leg of the relay and then, exhausted and exhilarated, cheered the rest of the team. It culminated when Mejico, a track team captain and the anchor leg of the relay, crossed the finish line in a blur. That’s when the team realized their time was blazing fast.
They jumped up and down, screamed with excitement, and shed some happy tears. But the team had to wait for the results of the next, and final, heat of the race to learn that they had won the championship.
“It was amazing,” Mejico said of the victory. “The pinnacle of what we do is the national championship. You want to do the best you can when you get there, and I don’t think you can do any better than coming out as national champions.”
‘The biggest of deals’
David Cusano Jr., head track and field coach, almost ran out of words to explain how important this victory was for the relay team, which he described as having incredible trust, competitiveness, an “elite mindset,” and a desire to win.
“It’s the biggest of deals—becoming a national champion is something that is completely earned and not given. You can’t purchase it, there is no membership fee, they don’t hand them out,” he said. “Being number one in the U.S. in all of Division III is literally historical. This accomplishment is the highest accolade that one can achieve during their athletic journey, and the pinnacle of athletic success.”
“The pinnacle of what we do is the national championship. You want to do the best you can when you get there, and I don’t think you can do any better than coming out as national champions.”
Fiona Mejico ’25
All the members of the relay team have been designated as All-American athletes by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, often multiple times. Zeller was named All-American twice, Pizzi three times, Ewald three times, and Mejico seven times. Colby athletes also received individual accolades at the NCAA Championships, including Mejico, who placed 13th in the 400-meter dash, Ewald, who placed 17th, and Ren Zanze ’25 from the men’s team, who finished 14th in the 400-meter dash.
“I am so proud of both our men and women who competed at this year’s indoor national championships,” Cusano said. “I am lucky to be able to work with such incredible student athletes on a daily basis. They certainly represented the College, Colby athletics, and our greater Colby community at the highest levels.”
A winning mentality
The student athletes on the 4×400 relay team attribute their success this year to the closeness of the relay team and the track team in general.
“We’re a pretty tight group,” said Zeller, who is double majoring in economics: financial markets and government. “We practice together all year. It’s a lot of time together. I think just running together so much, and doing workouts with each other, you learn to trust each other and have fun.”
Prior to the indoor championships, the last time Mejico, Pizzi, Zeller, and Ewald raced together was in January, when they competed at Boston University and won with a time of 3:46.71. At that event, they set a new record for Colby, earning the fastest time of the season to date for NCAA Division III and the eighth-fastest time in Division III history. The U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association named them national athletes of the week after their victory, marking the first time that Colby athletes received this honor.
They went into the championship seeded second in the country.
“We knew that the national championship was within reach,” Mejico, a studio art: sculpture and Spanish double major. “It felt awesome. We’ve never been in that position before.”
Pizzi, a biology: neuroscience major, said the team always has a mission to do the best it can, but this felt different. “This time we went in with the mentality of winning.”
A strategy that works
A common strategy for the 4×400 relay is to have the team’s fastest runners take the first and fourth, or anchor, legs, with the two middle legs held by the other runners. But the Colby 4×400 team takes a different approach.
“We go slow to fast,” Zeller, who runs the first leg, said. “We just get faster as we go, and the other teams are not always ready for that.”
Pizzi, who runs the second leg, said that she likes to chase runners in front. “Having people in front of me pushes me to go a lot faster.”
The strategy has paid off for the team, according to Ewald, a double major in psychology: neuroscience and government, who runs the third leg.
“We’re not typically ahead by a lot in the beginning,” she said. “It’s a very ‘trust the process’ situation. We were in third place, and we made our way to first.”
Mejico agreed.
“I think it works really well because since other teams might put one of their fastest runners on the first leg, it pushes Tally and Kristina to put us in a really great position for Kaitlyn and me to close it out,” she said.
The power of teamwork
Another tactic that has worked well for them has been to have physically challenging practices, which help the runners succeed on race days.
“It’s definitely the most painful race. It’s one of the longest basically all-out sprint races we have,” Pizzi said.
Practicing hard, over and over again, allows them to get through it.
“What helps me is repetition,” Ewald said. “I know I can get through it, and I can run a good time. I just have to push past the pain.”
Finally, running the relay has a built-in spirit of teamwork that makes a big difference, they all said.
“I think the relay helps because you’re doing it for each other,” Ewald said. “Doing well as a team is obviously super satisfying because you get to share it with everybody else.”
Pizzi agreed.
“For our teammates, we all run so much faster, and it’s all so much more exciting,” she said. “And then moments like these where we’re on top of the podium and win, this is what makes it all worth it.”
They’re looking forward to continuing to work hard as a team and improving their times during the outdoor spring track season, which starts this coming weekend.
“Every week you’re just going out to see how much better you can be,” Zeller said. “And I think that none of us want to leave anything on the table.”
