Alex Phillip was named the National Men’s Track Athlete of the Year for the 2023 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field season. Phillip, who hails from Akron, Ohio, capped a record-breaking year at the 2023 NCAA DIII Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Rochester, New York, where he swept the 5000 and 10,000-meter titles – the latter of which with a meet-record 28:37.89 effort. If Phillip hadn’t already run faster over 25 laps earlier in the season, that would have been the NCAA DIII record. Instead, it was No. 2 behind his own mark of 28:31.60 that he ran at the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational in mid-April. Phillip also took down the NCAA DIII 5000-meter record when he went 13:47.41 three weeks earlier.