ALLENDALE - McBain native Klaudia O’Malley won the 1500-meter national championship at DII outdoor nationals on May 24th with a time of 4:29:11. It was her first individual title, and she did it in her final collegiate race. O’Malley is a multiple time All-American, she passed four competitors on the final lap to win the race, running the final lap in just 63 seconds. After finishing 2nd, 3rd, and 4th at nationals in the past she said that it felt like all of her hard work paid off earning that individual title, but back at McBain she would’ve never imagined how much success she would have at GVSU.
“Coming into Grand Valley, I didn’t have high hopes of, like, doing well on their team and making it to a national meet, but I never really thought in my life that I would be a national champion or be as good as I am now.” Said O’Malley. “So, it’s definitely crazy to think back of McBain and then now being a national champion, and I did not ever expect for me to even run for 6 years in college, I thought I was gonna be done after four years of running, now six years in college, and then wanting to run post collegiately, I would have never have thought that because in high school I like to run, but I wasn’t gung-ho about it. Like I wasn’t crazy about it.”
O’Malley plans to continue running in the future.