BOISE, Idaho — During her prep career at Mountain View High School, Lexy Halladay-Lowry re-wrote the track and field record books, before taking her talents to BYU.
Here in Idaho, she won four Idaho Gatorade Runner of the Year awards, and clocked the fastest mile among high school girls in the country with a 4:43.74 in the 1,600-meter race at the 2019 5A state track meet.
Now Halladay-Lowry is a junior with the Cougars and is running a new race – the 3,000-meter steeplechase. The Gem State native is quickly proving she is one of the top runners in the country in that event too.
At the 2023 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, Halladay-Lowry ran a personal-best 9:41.85 and finished in fourth place in the steeplechase. She was also one of four BYU women to be named a First Team All-American.
"I feel like this was the first time at the NCAA-level that I really stepped up to the line honestly confident, and knowing that like, if I just ran my race, I was going to do something," Halladay-Lowry told KTVB. "In high school, yeah, I went to some big meets, but the college level is so different. It's taken me some years to get that confidence and to get the strength to be able to compete at the highest level."
In 2017, Halladay-Lowry broke the record for the fastest mile ever run by a high school freshman, breaking four-time Olympian Mary Becker’s record from 1973. She also ran in the Nike Cross Nationals twice and took fourth place at the 2018 Foot Locker Nationals.
Halladay-Lowry won nine state championships in track and three in cross country with the Mavericks. Obviously, her name is all over the Idaho record books.
Despite the success high school, and now on the NCAA's biggest stage, Halladay-Lowry keeps a team-first, humble mentality. The BYU standout told KTVB her performance at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin this month was all about representing the Cougars.
"It means so much, not even just for me, but just as a BYU athlete and part of the BYU sisterhood. Every time we step up to the line, it's for so much more than just us and I really felt that, especially going into [the NCAAs]," Halladay-Lowry said. "All my teammates were watching and on the line, I knew I was representing them. So, to be able to get All-American, it was really sweet."
Entering the summer, Halladay-Lowry has another opportunity to accomplish greatness on a national stage. The All-American will compete in the 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships and USATF U20 Championships at the University of Oregon July 6-9.
"This will be my first one and it'll be great. We'll get some good experience and honestly, it's good to race at that level with those women," Halladay-Lowry said. "Hopefully one day that will be the level that I am competing at. It's good to just, you know, jump right in and we'll see how it goes."
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