For the first time in program history, the Ithaca College women’s track and field team has produced two All-Americans in the same track event.
All-American is a term that carries significant weight in college sports, only given to the best of the best of every division. Across the estimated 539,000 student-athletes participating in the NCAA during the 2024-25 athletic calendar, only a small percentage have been given the honor. In track and field, the prestigious title is only given to the eight best performers in the division per event.
Senior hurdler Laura Suppa and junior hurdler Rachel Larson cemented themselves in Bombers’ history over the weekend with standout performances at the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships. In a highly competitive 60-meter hurdles field, Suppa’s fourth-place finish and Larson’s sixth were enough to see the two standing on the podium next to one another, medals around their necks and trophies held high above their heads.
“After day one, qualifying for finals, you kind of know that you’re gonna be on the podium no matter how the race ends up going,” Larson said. “But it didn’t feel real until we stepped up on the podium, and I saw my teammates out in the crowd watching us.”
Unlike Suppa, who made an appearance at the 2024 national meet in this same event, Larson was one of three Bombers experiencing the scale of their inaugural national championship meet.
“The first time you try to tell them it’s just another track meet, but I know that’s not how they feel,” head coach Jennifer Potter said.
For Larson, the path to DIII’s summit was not easy, but it was filled with growth and development, both on and off the track. After the summer, where she focused on plyometric exercises during her cross-training days to improve her form and increase her explosiveness, she entered the winter 2025 season at a new level.
“I told her at the beginning of the season, ‘You’re going to nationals with me this year,’” Suppa said. “‘No matter what happens, you are going because I know how much potential you have,’ and at our first meet, she broke 9 [seconds]. Every meet since then, she’s gotten a PR.”
By the time this season’s AARTFC Indoor Championships rolled around, Larson’s 2024 PR of 9.25 seconds had improved significantly to 8.61, a time that put her among the top five in Division III. In that regional final, she would surpass herself yet again and set a new personal best time of 8.60 and shockingly have to settle for silver. Luckily for Larson, the runner who took first wore the same uniform as her.
Suppa’s progression to her regional championship-winning 8.58 second time was not nearly as linear as her junior teammate’s because she spent much of the 2025 season sitting in the 8.85-second range. The Canastota native was a second-team All-American in 2024, qualifying for nationals with the 8.86 she ran in that season’s Liberty League Championship meet. It took nearly a year before she saw another significant jump in time, not because of her speed but because of her form.
“She had a funky thing that I’d actually never seen before when she first transferred here,” Potter said. “Her trail leg has become significantly faster and more accurate in the time that she’s been here.”
Rather than continue running the same way she had been for the past year — bringing her back leg around the hurdle as opposed to bringing it over — Suppa switched up her start and trail leg movement and immediately ran a time of 8.71 seconds in her next meet. Through watching film of her races and working to improve her technique further, she was able to shave off another tenth of a second to win the Liberty League Championship with an 8.61 and came just two-hundredths of a second away from setting a new meet record at regionals.
Having the two best short-distance hurdlers in the region on the same team has been a huge help for a program that ranked just outside the top 25 in the nation in DIII, but Potter said the effect it has had on Larson and Suppa is just as profound.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had two people so close in level — especially at this level — in the same event, and they have embraced having each other to train with,” Potter said. “I think it makes them both better hurdlers.”
Their closeness is not just measured by the stopwatch; the high level of competition seems to have strengthened their friendship just as much as their performances. Suppa joked about how she might have reacted to Larson’s improvements back in high school.
“I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, no,’” Suppa said. “I just wanted to beat my teammates, but now I want the best for my teammates. I want the best for Rachel. She’s absolutely amazing. I’m so proud of her.”
Larson said she held much admiration for Suppa after watching her run at such a high level last year and has embraced being able to train with her whenever they can. For as much as track is an individual sport and the two of them directly compete with one another at almost every meet, both parties seem to realize that they are teammates first and competitors second.
“Laura and I are both very competitive people,” Larson said. “Which is good because [it] drives us to push each other to be better, but having competition as your training partner makes you better. So it’s like, Laura comes in first I come in second: doesn’t really matter, because we’re both running crazy times. We’re really close friends, and it’s more important to me to have her as a close friend than to beat her at a track race.”
