The two biggest American collegiate athletics conferences released their final pre-championship weekly honours this week, with Minnesota's Hadley Streit named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Week on Wednesday and Georgia sweeping the SEC men's awards on Tuesday afternoon. Streit's 69.72m hammer at the Torrin Lawrence Memorial in Athens led the NCAA across the past weekend and gave the Saint Paul native her second meet win of the outdoor season. The throw was a personal best by 71 centimetres and moved her to fourth on the all-time NCAA performer list ahead of the Big Ten Championships, which open at Nebraska's new Lincoln facility next Friday.
Georgia's haul was headed by freshman Jonathan Simms, named SEC Men's Runner of the Week for a 44.02 in the 400m at the same Torrin Lawrence meet that produced Streit's hammer mark. Simms went stride for stride with 2025 NCAA outdoor champion Samuel Ogazi of Alabama through the home straight, with the result decided by 0.005 seconds and Simms leaning on the line to take the win. The 44.02 stands as the world lead for 2026 and equals the freshman world best held by Torrin Lawrence himself. Bulldogs sprint coach Caryl Smith Gilbert called it the highest-quality 400m duel she had seen in college since Lawrence and Lashawn Merritt traded turns in the 2008 championship season.
The other two Georgia honourees were field athlete of the week Karon Daniels, off a 17.05m triple jump on the same evening, and freshman of the week Trevor Brody, who anchored the Bulldogs' 4x400 to a 3:00.40 win and ran a 45.4 split. The trio puts Georgia squarely in the conversation for SEC men's team honours alongside Arkansas, Florida and Texas A&M when the championship lands at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin on 14-17 May. Florida sprint coach Mike Holloway has the Gators set up for a points-heavy weekend across 100, 200 and the relays, with Texas A&M expected to bank big returns from its sprints corps and a deep men's 800m field.
The Big Ten meet is the more loaded of the two on paper, especially in the women's distances. Oregon's Jane Hedengren goes in as the heavy favourite for a 1500-5000-10000 sweep, with the 5000m and 10000m collegiate records already in her name from the Bryan Clay and Stanford stops; her 14:32 5000m takes more than four seconds out of the previous mark and is the fourth-fastest collegiate run at any altitude. USC's relays remain the deepest in the country, and Iowa's middle-distance group is expected to push Oregon hard in both 800 and 1500. Streit's hammer is a clear individual storyline, with the Husker women looking strong across the throws on home soil.
The conference championships dovetail directly into the NCAA East and West first rounds at Lexington and Fayetteville on 27-30 May, with declarations closing on 25 May and the top 12 in each event advancing to the championship at Hayward Field. The structure puts a heavy points-and-marks emphasis on this week's diamond meets and on the Big Ten and SEC weekends themselves, with athletes balancing championship-points racing against the qualifying standards. For programme-of-the-year voters, the resolution between Georgia, Oregon, Florida, Arkansas and the Husker women across the next fortnight is likely to set the men's and women's national leaderboards going into Eugene.