Twelve runners from the California track & field team are headed to Seattle to race at the University of Washington's Dempsey Indoor this Friday and Saturday, when the Huskies will host the UW Invitational and Mile City meets. The Golden Bears hope to take advantage of the facility's oversized track, which contains wider turns than a standard indoor track, to post ACC Championships-qualifying times and new personal bests.
 
The first day of competition will contain all of the non-mile track events, while Saturday will be the all-day "Mile City" event featuring hundreds of racers. Both will be streamed on Runnerspace+, with live results available on pntfo.
 
Nine of Cal's entries will be competing for the first time this track season. Freshman Jackson Hein and indoor redshirt sophomore Lamarr Kirk Jr., who respectively broke Cal's 600m and 1000m records at the Spokane Sports Showcase two weeks ago, are both entered in the 800m. Junior Justin Pretre, who opened Cal's 2025-26 campaign at the Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener, will be competing on both days, first in the 3000m invite (Friday) and then in the mile invite (Saturday). In the past, Washington's track has been particularly friendly to Pretre, who posted three top-10 program marks at the Dempsey Indoor in 2025 (including his first sub-four-minute mile).
 
 
UW INVITATIONAL | MILE CITY (Jan. 30-31 – Seattle, Wash.)
Event Info
Live Streams (Runnerspace+)
Live Results
 
CALIFORNIA ENTRIES (MEN)
Program top-10 holders marked with an asterisk
(FR) or (R-FR) indicates that the athlete is a freshman or redshirt freshman
 
UW INVITATIONAL
800m – Jackson Hein (FR), Lamarr Kirk Jr.
3000m Invite – Caden Carney, Justin Pretre*
3000m – Rowan FitzGerald, Sam Franco (R-FR), Zac Gibson (R-FR), Gabriel Rodriguez (R-FR)
5000m – John Sesteaga
 
MILE CITY
Mile Invite – Justin Pretre*
Mile Seeded – Caden Carney, Rowan FitzGerald, Sam Franco (R-FR), Zac Gibson (R-FR), Gabriel Rodriguez (R-FR)
                                                                                                                                                                            
CALIFORNIA ENTRIES (WOMEN)
Program top-10 holders marked with an asterisk
(FR) or (R-FR) indicates that the athlete is a freshman or redshirt freshman
 
UW INVITATIONAL
800m – Carolina Dawson
3000m – Addie Johnson*, Georgia McCorkle
 
MILE CITY
Mile Seeded – Addie Johnson, Georgia McCorkle
 
 
MAKING WAVES IN THE ACC
A Cal athlete has won each of the past two ACC Men's Freshman of the Week awards thanks to a pair of outstanding performances that established them as the conference's top rookies in their events. Sam Novak, who joined the Bears as the nation's No. 2 pole vault recruit, tied for No. 6 in Cal history after posting a mark of 5.25m (17-2.75) in his collegiate debut that ranks No. 4 overall in the conference. Pietro Camilli, the No. 12 men's hammer recruit, recorded an indoor weight throw mark of 19.98m (65-6.75) at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Invitational to rise to No. 4 in Cal's record books and seventh in the ACC this season.
 
RECORDS, RECORDS, RECORDS
The Bears have broken three school records and three freshman records so far this season.  At the Spokane Sports Showcase, the Bears posted a pair of all-time program bests in the middle distance events - the first by Lamarr Kirk Jr., who surpassed his own 1000m record by over five seconds with a time of 2:27.97, and the next by rookie Jackson Hein, who surpassed a 10-year-old mark in the 600m at 1:18.83. Pietro Camilli threw the weight 19.61m (64-4) in his collegiate debut, crushing Cal's 11-year-old freshman record, while Sam Novak recorded a win in the pole vault with a mark of 5.25m (17-2.75) to become the first Cal freshman in history to cross the 17-foot barrier indoors, breaking the program's 19-year-old top rookie mark.  At the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Invitational, Camilli bettered his freshman weight throw record to 19.98m (65-6.75), while Seth Johnson improved his own program 300m record to 34.65.
 
ALL-ACC RETURNERS
Ten Bears on this year's squad combined for 14 All-ACC honors (six indoor, eight outdoor) last season. Sophomore thrower Lucija Leko was responsible for three of those, with one first-team (outdoor shot put) and two second-team (indoor shot put, discus) nods, while classmates Trevor Rogers (long jump) and Valentina Savva (hammer, weight) each earned an outdoor silver medal and indoor second-team recognition. Senior long jumper Jason Plumb won conference bronze medals in two consecutive years, his most recent coming at the 2025 ACC Indoor Championships. The Indoor All-ACC group is rounded out by second-teamers Victor Ezike Jr. (high jump) and Seth Johnson (heptathlon), while the outdoor group also consists of second-team honorees Donovan Bradley (110m hurdles), Loreal Wilson (400m hurdles), Audrey Jacobs (hammer) and Adrianna Coleman (hammer). Of those, Johnson went on to claim Second-Team All-America status at the 2025 NCAA Indoor Championships, while Savva was named a Second-Team All-American at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, where both Leko and Jacobs also clinched All-America Honorable Mention nods.
 
INTERNATIONAL STARS
Three returning Bears followed up their collegiate seasons with high-level international competition in the summer of 2025. Valentina Savva, who broke the Cal freshman records in both the hammer and weight throws and earned Second-Team All-America honors in the former, crossed the 70-meter barrier for the first time to finish third at the European U23 Championships and set a new Cypriot record. Teammate and 2023 Second-Team All-American Audrey Jacobs also reached the hammer final at the European U23 Championships and finished second at the Dutch Championships, while Lucija Leko (Croatia) competed in both the discus and shot put at the European U23 Championships and finished seventh in the former. On the track, Mari Testa competed in the 100m hurdles at the Austrian U23 Championships, winning her first title to qualify her for the European U23 Championships.
 
HIGH HOPES FOR THE HURDLERS
Five returning Cal hurdlers posted program top-10 times in 2025 and are looking to improve even further in 2026. Upperclassmen Mari Testa, Saqqara Ruffin and Loreal Wilson are each coming off breakout campaigns: Testa made her debut on Cal's indoor (No. 5, 60m hurdles) and outdoor (No. 8, 100m hurdles) all-time lists, while Ruffin's and Wilson's outdoor seasons saw them likewise appear on the top-10 lists for the first time at No. 6 (100m hurdles) and No. 5 (400m hurdles), respectively. Sophomore Inara Ukawuba raced just once in a Cal uniform before missing the outdoor season, but she matched the ninth-fastest 60m hurdles time in program history. On the men's side, Donovan Bradley, who had already posted Cal's fourth-fastest 60m hurdles time as a freshman in 2024, followed that up with the program's fifth-fastest 110m hurdles time as a sophomore. So far in the 2026 season, it is Ruffin who has made the most noise after she posted two personal bests in the 60m hurdles at the Spokane Sports Showcase to rise to No. 8 on Cal's all-time list.
 
ROOKIES ON WATCH
Cal is fielding a plethora of talented freshman looking to make some noise at the conference and national levels this season. The trio of Lauren Gilhooly, Kaitlyn Williams and Tiffany Williams lead a strong freshman sprints unit, with Gilhooly ranking among California's top high school girls in the 100m and 200m. South African middle-distance star Salma Bejia, who was the national U20 bronze medalist in 2024, was named the No. 10 women's 800m recruit by Track & Field News, while Bradley Arrey ran the third leg of a 4x800m California state champion relay squad that was third fastest in the nation and Jackson Hein posted the fourth-fastest 800m time by a California high school boy in 2025 - a year before opening his season with a Cal-record 600m time at the Spokane Sports Showcase. The pole vault group bears a pair of top Track & Field News-ranked recruits in Sam Novak (No. 2) and Kai Anderson (No. 12), both state champions in 2024; Novak, a native of Arizona who became the first Cal freshman in history to surpass 17 feet indoors at the Spokane Sports Showcase, posted the fifth-highest jump by a high school boy nationwide in 2025 and is a two-time USATF U20 Championships competitor, while Anderson had the second-best mark among California high school boys last year. Horizontal jumpers Caitlyn Johnson (the 2025 No. 20 girls triple jumper in Texas) and Avery Hart (the 2025 No. 3 girls triple jumper and No. 4 girls long jumper in Massachusetts) look to bolster an already-impressive squad that has qualified at least one woman to the NCAA West Regionals in four of the past five years. For the throws, 2025 Italian U23 hammer silver medalist Pietro Camilli (who crushed Cal's rookie record in the weight throw at the Spokane Sports Showcase) 2025 Lithuanian U20 shot put champion Matas Mikulėnas and 2025 California boys No. 2 shot putter Eliot Traxler hope to become the next Bear greats. Finally, Antonio Bayon, the No. 8 decathlon recruit (Track & Field News), looks to be another standout multi-eventer at Cal, joining a group that has seen nine men in program history collect a total of 15 All-America honors.
 
NEW YEAR, NEW STAFF
Cal's full-time coaching staff has two new faces this year in Tyler Burdorff and Nicole Matysik. Burdorff, who leads the throws unit, arrived at Cal from Maryland, where he coached two national-record holders, four USA Track & Field (USATF) Indoor Championships finalists, a European U20 Championships qualifier and two USATF U20 Championships qualifiers as well as two All-Americans. Matysik raced for Furman cross country and track & field as a collegiate runner, earning 11 combined All-SoCon honors and five conference titles. In addition to Burdorff and Matysik, this year's Bears are also receiving new instruction from two-time Olympic hammer thrower Stamatia Scarvelis as well as program alumni Carrick Denker (who won All-West Region honors in the 2024 cross country season) and Riley Knott (a three-time All-ACC jumper).
 
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