PITTSFORD, N.Y. -- An incredible season that included numerous accolades and program records came to an end on Friday evening, as Allegheny College senior
Mihaela Toader (Pittsburgh, Pa./Mt. Lebanon) ran her last collegiate race at the 2023 NCAA Championships, hosted on the campus of St. John Fisher University in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Pittsford.
Toader, who will go down as perhaps the greatest sprinter in program history, placed 17th in the 400-meter dash prelims. She was fifth out of seven in her heat with a time of 57.12 seconds. Of those who qualified for the finals on Saturday, seven did so with Polisseni Track and Field Complex facility records. In the ultra-competitive field, all eight qualifiers ran sub-56 second times.
Throughout the 2022-23 indoor and outdoor season, Toader reset every imaginable record for an Allegheny sprinter. The College's Female Senior Achievement Award winner and the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) Female Athlete of the Year, she was the first Gator sprinter to compete in the national championship meet in over three decades. This season, she swept the Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC) 200- and 400-meter titles during both indoor and outdoor competition, while leading the Gators to both team championships. Toader also collected a total of four All-Region awards.
Toader qualified for the 2023 NCAA Championships with a personal- and school-record time of 56.14 seconds at Baldwin Wallace University's Harrison Dillard Twilight meet on May 12. This spring, she became the first Gator to run a sub-57 second time while breaking a 33-year-old record set by former All-American Donna Moutlon in 1990.
