Kaitlyn Mccolly

Happy birthday to the USA’s Kaitlyn McColly, a two-time national champion who now spends her days as a paediatric nurse.

Kaitlyn won the NAIA outdoor heptathlon national title in 2023 with 4,922 points, going in as the number one seed and winning the 100m hurdles inside it. In February 2024 she won the NAIA indoor pentathlon national title with 3,716 points, which meant she held both national multi-event titles at the same time. She took a second place in the 2025 NAIA heptathlon, has five All-American honours and seven All-Academic awards, and in 2023 she swept her conference in the long jump, triple jump, pentathlon and 400m hurdles.

She also wore the American vest. In 2023 she competed for the United States at the World University Games in Chengdu, finishing nineteenth in the heptathlon with a then personal best of 4,949 points and setting lifetime bests in the 100m hurdles, the 200m and the 800m during the competition. An NAIA athlete on a Team USA vest is a rare thing; the pathway to a world championship almost never runs through a school of that size in North Dakota.

Then there is the rest of it. She graduated from Dickinson State in May 2025 with a **perfect 4.0 GPA**, was named Outstanding Graduate of the School of Professional Studies, won the NAIA’s A.O. Duer scholar-athlete award, and went straight into work as a paediatric nurse at Sanford Medical in Bismarck. She is from Hinsdale, Montana, a very small town, and at the 2021 Montana state championships she scored forty-two points on her own across five events and nearly carried her school to a team title by herself.

Seven events, a 4.0, and now a children’s ward. The temperament that makes a heptathlete and the temperament that makes a paediatric nurse turn out to be the same one.

Happy birthday, Kaitlyn! Two national titles, a Team USA vest, a 4.0 and a ward full of kids who are lucky to have you. Go get it. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇺🇸