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Maurica Powell knew she’d won it before it began.

“I realized she had it about a month earlier, if I’m honest,” said Powell, UW’s director of track and field and cross country. “I didn’t think the NCAA championship would be particularly close. There was no way anyone was going to beat Sophie on that Saturday.”

It was not always that way.

Despite the fact that Sophie’s mother is Sonia O’Sullivan, one of the most decorated Irish athletes in history. Despite the fact that her father is heralded Australian track and field coach Nic Bideau. Despite the overflowing success that runs — pun intended — in her renowned family.

In fact, Sonia O’Sullivan — a four-time Olympian — won back-to-back NCAA cross country titles at Villanova in 1990 and 1991. She claimed gold in the 5,000 meters at the 1995 world championships and silver in the same event at the 2000 Olympic Games. In 1994, she set a world record in the 2,000 meters that would not be broken for 23 years.

“So Sophie grew up with those two as her parents,” Powell explained. “But they really did a phenomenal job of keeping any pressure off of her. There was never any expectation that she was going to fall into this. So really, as a result, Sophie sorted it out for herself.”

She sorted it out in Seattle. But first, Sophie participated in basketball, soccer, badminton and track and field throughout high school in Australia. A four-sport schedule prohibited her from actually training for track. She showed up for races and won anyway.

“She was good as a high school runner because she was really competitive and she was really talented,” Powell said. “But she probably didn’t train nearly as much as some other kids her age. She was still winning races because she was so tough and gritty and competitive and she just had a lot of physical gifts.”

In college, those gifts were no longer enough.

Sophie initially struggled in Seattle, taking several seasons to find her stride. She admitted that “I’d never had to really focus on something like that and put a real effort toward it. When you get to the NCAA, everybody’s got talent. It turns out, it’s actually quite hard.”

Physically, mentally, holistically, the transition took time.

“Sophie probably ran 20 miles a week when she was in high school. She probably runs 85 or 90 miles a week now,” Powell said. “Nobody can get from Point A to Point B overnight.”

Added O’Sullivan: “You kind of turn a corner at some point and think, ‘Do I want to do really well here and really put in an effort and do everything I can to be good?’ The mentality of deciding to do that makes a big difference.”

That difference was dramatic. In 2023, Sophie — an Irish and Australian citizen — won the European under-23 title in the 1,500 meters, the first gold medal for Ireland in meet history, and simultaneously snatched a school record by finishing in 4:07.18. The next summer, she added an Irish national championship in the 1,500 meters and qualified for the Olympic Games. In Paris, she notched another school record (4:00.23) and finished just short of the semifinals.

All of which was a testament to the hard, uphill miles between Point A and Point B.

“Sometimes kids train really hard when they’re young, and then they get addicted to the winning,” Powell said. “For Sophie, she loved everything about it before she was even winning anything. I think that’s what makes her a little different, honestly. She chose it for herself, despite who her parents are. She loves competing. She loves lining up. She loves trying to beat people. She loves getting the best out of herself.”

But in one event, Sophie’s best had long eluded her. In both 2023 and 2024, she reached the 1,500-meter final at the NCAA Outdoor Championships. And in both 2023 and 2024, she finished last in the season’s final race.

Would her 1,500-meter finale end with a familiar bellyflop?

“I try not to read much in the weeks leading up to the races. I think I read one preview of the women’s 1,500 and it didn’t really mention Sophie, and I just remember laughing to myself and thinking how silly that was,” Powell said. “There was really no point in the final couple weeks where I didn’t think Sophie would win.”

Her triumph on June 14 — with a time of 4:07.94 — was an undeniably dominant display. It was also the first national championship for a UW women’s runner since Katie Flood took the 1,500-meter title in 2012.

It was hard. It had to be.

“When you’re in a position where you have to fight to finish fifth or sixth or seventh or 11th, you know how to fight a bit harder. You don’t take it for granted when you get an opportunity,” she said.

“I’d been in America for a long time, five years. I had a lot of fun there and a lot of good memories, but it’d been up and down. I had never really won anything, to be honest. So it meant a lot to pull it all together,” she added.

That emotion was evident before Sophie ever crossed the metaphorical, or literal, finish line.

But the smile, apparently, was news to Sophie.

“In the interview afterward they were like, ‘Did you know you’d won before you finished?’ And I was like, ‘No, I didn’t know.’ But then I was looking back at this video and I was celebrating so far out,” she said. “I didn’t even know I did that. It was just one of those things you don’t control. You know when you know.”

Now that she’s graduated from UW with an NCAA championship and a degree in communications, who knows what will happen next?

Powell does. Of course she does.

So, here’s a spoiler.

“Is [the NCAA title] the only impressive thing that Sophie’s going to do this year? Probably not,” said Powell, whose Huskies finished second nationally in the USTFCCCA Terry Crawford Program of the Year rankings. “She’ll do a lot of other really cool things. She’ll run in Tokyo [in the world championships] in September and she’ll make the final and she’ll be a medal threat soon. She’s going to have a long story in track and field, for sure.”

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