Sheffield Won An Incredible 400H Final

LaTanya Sheffield’s 400-meter hurdle victory at the 1985 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships ended just like her San Diego State coach told her it would the night before – with an American record. 

No one knew how thrilling the race would be – not even her coach, older brother Rahn Sheffield, a former two-time NCAA finalist for the Aztecs who convinced LaTanya to take up the event two years earlier. 

That 1985 NCAA final had all the makings to be special as Sheffield – who scared her collegiate record of 55.23 with a meet-record 55.39 in the heats – started in lane 5, two lanes outside of UCLA’s Jackie Joyner, who had won their conference matchup two weeks earlier in a best of 55.87 when Sheffield didn’t finish as a hurdle ahead of her was accidentally set too high. 

In this duel, Sheffield took initial control and held a slight lead through hurdle 4, at which point Joyner – competing in one of six events – took over through hurdle 7. Sheffield fought back and regained the lead by the 9th hurdle and stormed home to win in 54.64, while Joyner finished in 55.19 – both ahead of Sheffield’s 55.23 CR.

At the time, the only collegian to have ever run faster came in a postseason race when 1984 NCAA champion Nawal El Moutawakel of Iowa State won Los Angeles Olympic gold in 54.61. The silver medalist in the LA Games was Judi Brown (1983 NCAA champ while at Michigan State), who set the previous American record of 54.93 at the 1984 Olympic Trials.

Sheffield was inspiringly engaging in her celebration, dancing at seemingly every opportunity.

“I’m so very excited,” she told Ruth Laney for Track & Field News in noting Sheffield was “still hugging, clapping and dancing an hour after the race.”

“This is just unbelievable,” Sheffield explained. “This is a giant step for me. All the other meets I’ve run this year were building blocks for a house. Now I’ve just put the roof on it.”

As a post-collegian, Sheffield made the 1988 Olympic team and ran her PR of 54.36, then became a mother and a coach. In 2019, the native of El Cajon, California (near San Diego), became the first woman to be a head coach at Long Beach State. One of her daughters, Jaide Stepter, was a three-time Pac-12 champion for Southern California and while just missing the family record in the 400 hurdles (54.95), ran faster than mom in the 400 (50.63).