Indiana State’s Hyche Swept Sprints In 1993

No sprinter – man or woman – has more NCAA Division I individual sprint titles than Holli Hyche of Indiana State when combining indoors and outdoors.

Hyche amassed her seven NCAA titles in just two years, while the others with seven – Carlette Guidry of Texas from 1988 to 1991 and Walter Dix of Florida State from 2005 to 2008 – accumulated theirs over a four-year span.

Hyche won four of the titles as a junior in 1993, becoming the first woman since LSU’s Dawn Sowell in 1989 to complete the indoor 55-200 double, followed by the outdoor 100-200 double in the same year. Hyche was particularly crushing in the outdoor 200, winning in 22.34 to eclipse the meet’s low-altitude best of 22.47 set by Florence Griffith of UCLA 10 years earlier.

As a senior, Hyche added to her legend with three more crowns.

Indoors, she doubled up in the 55 and 200 once again, joining Guidry as the only other female athlete with such a pair of sweeps. The Sycamore was exceptionally historic in the 200, where she turned in a 22.90 performance to lower Sowell’s five-year-old meet record of 22.90.

Outdoors, Hyche repeated as 100-meter champion – but took second in the 200, as Merlene Frazier of Texas ended her streak of 49 consecutive sprint victories.

Amazingly, Hyche almost didn’t go to college at all. It wasn’t until her junior year in high school that she discovered why she was struggling in the classroom. Then, of all the schools that recruited the Indianapolis high school star, there was only one choice for college.

“Indiana State has a program for the learning disabled, and I’m dyslexic,” Hyche told Jeff Hollobaugh of Track & Field News. “I wanted to get help with it. None of the other schools I talked to had study tables for the learning disabled.”