By JONATHON ZENK, Northwestern State Sports Information
Over the decades, the Northwestern State track and field program has produced many of the Southland Conference’s best sprinters.
Senior Maygan Shaw is on the short list of most accomplished speedsters in Northwestern’s illustrious history.
In this day-and-age when athletes change schools almost as much as they change their clothes, Shaw has been one of the rare ones to stick around at one school for her entire collegiate career.
On Saturday, she’ll make her final competitive appearance at the Walter P. Ledet Track & Field Complex, as she will be one of the six female seniors being recognized at 3:50 during the annual Leon Johnson NSU Invitational. Field events begin at 10 a.m. with racing starting at 1.
“I am super excited,” Shaw said. “I am actually not really nervous since it is a home meet. You’re back home and you know what the track feels like, and you know the competition. I am just super excited.”
Coming from Pineville, she was set on making the short trek up I-49 to carry on the sprinting legacy with the Lady Demons as well as enrolling in a nursing program even more storied than NSU’s sprint tradition.
“Nursing was the reason for coming to Northwestern and track was a means of funding,” she said. “It is close to home as well, being from Pineville. All the things were lining up and God was like ‘This is where you need to be.’
“My parents come up every single year to watch me, even for conference. They go all the way to Alabama or all the way to who knows where just to see me run at conference. They are very supportive and they’ll be here again this weekend.”
As soon as she arrived on campus, she made an impact. In her first indoor SLC meet, she earned the 400-meter dash gold medal as a freshman, running a 55.96 after winning the prelims as well.
From there, she did not let up, accumulating 17 overall medals so far, including 10 golds.
She was able to learn from some of the school’s very best sprinters as well during her career.
“It feels great to meet so many different people and learning so many different techniques through everybody’s craft,” Shaw said. “It has been great, and I am glad I got to meet and learn from a number of amazing athletes while I was here.”
As part of the 4×400 relay teams, she was a key as NSU clinched the first women’s indoor and outdoor conference championships in program history.
Back during the 2023 indoor championships, the Lady Demons were tied with Lamar going into the final event of the day—the 4×400 relay. Northwestern finished second in the relay but finished ahead of Lamar to win the indoor title.
Flash forward to the 2024 outdoor conference meet, as Northwestern was trailing rival McNeese by a slim margin going into the 4×400 relay. Shaw ran the first leg, helping lead the Lady Demons to not only the victory in the event, but earning Northwestern its first outdoor team title.
“It was super crazy,” Shaw said. “I seriously didn’t know we were breaking history until we broke history. I was just like ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ You see all the great athletes who have competed here and wonder how this only happened just now. I am so lucky that it happened while I was here, and I am so glad to be a part of that.”
With one elusive item out of the way, she knocked the other one out at the NCAA Championships, as she and her three relay teammates earned second team All-America honors.
However, with all she has accomplished at Northwestern, from gold medals to All-American status, there is still one item she’d like to accomplish — one goal she calls her biggest.
“Everything that has happened has happened, and I am really happy about everything I have accomplished here so far,” she said. “But I am not still at my biggest goal, which is running a 51.00 in the 400-meter dash. My grandpa ran that and I just want to do what he did. Anything that happened prior, I am grateful for, but my goal is to still get that 51.00.”
She has a chance to run that time Saturday in front of the home crowd, as her decorated career begins to wind down.
