Lemngole, Anthony win The Bowerman

Alabama’s Doris Lemngole and Arkansas’ Jordan Anthony were awarded The Bowerman on Thursday at the Gaylord Texan Convention Center in Dallas, Texas.

Both athletes won one NCAA indoor title and one NCAA outdoor title during the 2025 season.

Lemngole made history by becoming the first Kenyan-born athlete to win The Bowerman. She is the second non-American-born woman to win The Bowerman, with the first being St. Lucia’s Julien Alfred in 2023.

She won The Bowerman following her sophomore season where she won NCAA titles in the indoor 5,000 meter and the 3,000-meter steeplechase in which she broke her own collegiate record twice in the same season. 

Lemngole first set the collegiate steeplechase record at the 2024 NCAA Championships with a time of 9:15.24. She broke her own record on Apr. 18, 2025, with a time of 9:10.13 at the Wake Forest Invitational before breaking it again with a time of 8:58.15 at the 2025 NCAA Championships.

She holds four of the top-five spots on the all-time collegiate steeplechase list.

Other women’s finalists for The Bowerman were New Mexico’s Pamela Kosgei and Michigan’s Savannah Sutherland. Kosgei is from Kenya and Sutherland is from Canada, marking the first time in The Bowerman history that none of the three female finalists were American-born.

At the 2025 NCAA Championships, Kosgei became the fourth woman in 15 years to win both the 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter in the same year and finished the season ranked third on the collegiate all-time list in both events. In both events, the two performances ahead of Kosgei were from 2024 The Bowerman winner, Parker Valby. 

Of the three finalists, Sutherland was the only one to win one NCAA title during the 2025 season. Her title came during the NCAA Outdoor Championships in which she broke Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s 7-year-old collegiate record to win the 400-meter hurdles.

Anthony won The Bowerman after winning both the NCAA indoor 60 meter and outdoor 100 meter titles during the 2025 season. He was the first person to win both events in the same season since 2017 when Christian Coleman won both.

He started his collegiate career at Kentucky where he competed in both track and football before transferring to Texas A&M. Anthony played one season of football at Texas A&M before transferring to Arkansas to compete in both track and football. He played one season of football at Arkansas before becoming a full-time track athlete.

Anthony finished the season at No. 8 in indoor 60 meter and No. 50 in the outdoor 200 meter on the collegiate all-time lists with times of 6.47 and 19.93, respectively.

The other men’s finalists included Auburn’s Ja’Kobe Tharp and Baylor’s Nathaniel Ezekiel, who are from Tennessee and Nigeria, respectively.

In 2025, Tharp became the fifth athlete in the last 15 years to win NCAA titles in both the indoor 60-meter hurdles and the outdoor 110-meter hurdles during the same season.

Ezekiel finished 2025 with four of the top 10 all time collegiate performances in the 400-meter hurdles as well as the NCAA title. He was the only men’s finalist to win one NCAA title in 2025.

Lemngole is currently a junior at Alabama and Anthony is competing professionally for Adidas.