GENEVA, Ohio -- While five athletes had faster qualifying times in the 800 meters going into the 2025 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, it was Elizabethtown College's Kelty Oaster that stood atop the podium Saturday afternoon after winning her second consecutive national title in the event.

The talk coming into the meet revolved around Goucher's Tanise Thornton-Fillyaw and Rochester's Megan Bell, a pair of competitors that ran 2:05 during the season and finished 1-2 in qualification. Oaster, who was the runner-up to Thornton-Fillyaw at the Landmark Outdoor Championships at the beginning of the month, did manage to run a new PR in that race, 2:07.17, to come into nationals as the sixth seed.

Oaster and Thornton-Fillyaw competed against one another yet again in the preliminaries, with the Gophers' junior winning the second section just ahead of Oaster. Both runners earned the automatic qualifying spots into Saturday's final.

In Saturday's final, Bell charged out hard, coming through in 60-seconds plus. Oaster got closed off and sat toward the back over the first 250 meters, but coming around the turn around 300 meters, she maneuvered her way around the pack and up into third through 400 meters, just behind Bell in 61.5 seconds.

There, the field was stretched and it was Oaster using her long stride to reel in Bell. Thornton-Fillyaw followed, slightly off Oaster's pace down the backstretch. It would be Oaster and Bell fighting it out for the national title as the two came around the final turn, Oaster trailing Bell by only a few steps.

As D3GloryDays.com noted in their women's 800 meter preview ahead of the championship meet, "Don't count out Oaster in the final 100m after a big indoor victory." That was exactly right.

Oaster and Bell came to the line neck-and-neck, and Oaster was able to beat out Bell by .02 to win the national title in a new personal best, school and conference record time of 2:05.09. Her time was the fifth-fastest in a championship race all-time and she is now the sixth-fastest women's 800-meter runner of all-time.

Oaster also becomes Elizabethtown's first-ever multi-time female individual national champion and only the second-ever for the College along with Eric Mast (Wrestling).