Olathe native’s historic weekend powers Wichita State to American track title
Wichita State did not win the American Conference outdoor track and field championship with one superstar performance, one dominant event group or one hot day.
The Shockers won it everywhere.
They won it in the decathlon, where their multi-event machine churned out another champion. They won it in the jumps, where Josh Parrish broke a 46-year-old school record and Kaleb Tesmer led a high-jump avalanche. They won it in the hurdles, where the Parrish twins repeated as champions. They won it in the distance races, the pole vault, the throws and the relays — all those points stacking up until a team race that seemed to be up for grabs became a runaway by this past Saturday night.
But even on a championship team built on depth, Josh Parrish made himself impossible to miss.
Parrish, a junior from Olathe and a three-time honorable mention All-American, delivered the best individual performance of the meet to lead the WSU men to the 2026 American Conference Outdoor Championship over the weekend in Denton, Texas.
The Shockers finished with 171 points to beat North Texas by 33 points for their first outdoor conference title since 2023 and third in the past five years. North Texas finished second with 138 points, while South Florida was third with 116.
Parrish was named the meet’s Most Valuable Performer after scoring 26.5 points, the most by any athlete in the competition. He won the long jump, repeated as champion in the 110-meter hurdles, helped WSU place third in the 400 relay, finished fifth in the 200 and added another point with an eighth-place finish in the triple jump.
Parrish broke a 46-year-old school record in the long jump on Friday with a leap of 26 feet, 3 3/4 inches meters, becoming the first Shocker to clear the 26-foot barrier. It was also a stadium record and came one day after he broke WSU’s 24-year-old school record in the 200 prelims with a time of 20.63 seconds.
By Saturday, Parrish still had another title run left in him. He won his second straight American outdoor title in the 110 hurdles with a wind-aided personal-best time of 13.17. WSU piled up 17 points in the event with Tyler Carroll finishing fifth, Jabari Armstrong seventh and Luke Holthusen eighth.
That was the story of the meet for the Shockers. Parrish gave them star power. The rest of the roster kept turning nearly every event into a point-scoring opportunity.
WSU entered the final day with 66 points, just 16 ahead of North Texas and Rice. By the end of Saturday, the Shockers had pulled away with five championships on the final day and nine individual titles across the full meet.
The foundation started Thursday when sophomore Elkana Kipruto won the 10,000 in 29:44.15, beating the field by 45 seconds. It was his third American title, following the 2025 cross country championship and the indoor 5,000 earlier this year. He also became the first WSU men’s athlete to win the American outdoor 10K title since the Shockers joined the conference in 2017-18. Kipruto later added a runner-up finish in the 5,000 on Saturday.
WSU’s multi-event tradition also delivered again. Rikard Trogen Hedin won his second straight decathlon title with 7,377 points, the No. 5 score in school history. The Shockers have now won four of the last five American decathlon titles and five of eight since joining the league .Trogen Hedin led WSU to 18 points in the decathlon with Cole Smither finishing fifth, Myles Larsen sixth and Luke Porter eighth.
In the high jump, WSU produced one of its biggest event hauls of the meet. Kaleb Tesmer won the men’s title by clearing 6-9 3/4 meters on his first attempt, edging two North Texas jumpers who also cleared the bar. Andre Pentecost placed fourth, Darius Graham fifth and Smither seventh, giving the Shockers 20.5 points in the event.
Jason Parrish, Josh’s twin brother, also repeated as American champion in the 400 hurdles, winning Saturday’s final in 49.58. He joined Josh Parrish, Brody Anderson and Chairo Ogbebor on WSU’s third-place 400 relay. Ogbebor and Jason Parrish also scored in the 100 with wind-aided times of 9.89 and 10.04.
The Shockers scored 17 points in the long jump behind Josh Parrish’s title with Travon Williams finishing fourth, Darius Graham seventh and Asher Buggs-Tipton eighth. They later added two podium finishes in the triple jump, where Kelvin Acheampong placed second and Buggs-Tipton was third.
WSU also picked up 10 points in the pole vault with Carson Ratzlaff finishing fourth, Liam Miller sixth and Trogen Hedin seventh. Austin Carrera and Jonah Allison scored in the steeplechase, Kelvin Kipyego scored in the 1,500, and Eli Johnson and Trogen Hedin added points in the discus.
The weekend was a full-program surge for WSU, which won nine individual titles, set or tied three school records, produced 12 all-time top-10 marks and recorded 56 personal records.
The championship weekend also earned WSU’s coaching staff the American Conference Staff of the Year honor, another nod to the program-wide depth behind the title. The Shockers are led by head coach Steve Rainbolt and his assistants in John Wise (sprints, hurdles), Heidi Benton (horizontal jumps), Aliyah Fertig pole vault), John Hetzendorf (throws), Kirk Hunter (distance), Connor Vaughn, Tanner Brown and Adam Moore.
The Shocker women finished sixth with 70 points, just two points out of fourth, while Rice won the women’s title with 142. Combined, the WSU men’s and women’s teams scored 241 points, the most of any school at the meet.
The women had their own championship moments, including Lucy Ndungu winning the 10,000 on Thursday, Jelese Alexander clearing 6-1 1/4 meters to win the high jump with a top-10 national mark and freshman Jasmine Stiede stunning the 800 field.
Stiede entered the meet seeded 19th in the 800, then ran the fastest prelim time Friday before closing hard to win Saturday’s final in 2:13.89. She was named the American’s Freshman of the Year.
The next step for WSU will come later this week when the NCAA announces qualifiers for the West Prelims. That meet will be held May 27-30 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The top 48 athletes in the western half of the country qualify in each individual event, along with the top 24 relays. From there, the top 12 in each event in Arkansas will advance to the NCAA Finals in Eugene, Oregon.
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