Mikaela Warr: Santa Clarita’s Sprinting Champion Brings Her Speed to San Diego State

Some athletes peak early and fade. Others make their biggest splash in high school and never quite recapture it. And then there is Mikaela Warr — a sprinter who arrived at Canyon High School in Santa Clarita, California, collected championships and records across four years, graduated as the 2024 California CIF State 100 meters champion, and then walked into San Diego State University ready to do it all over again at the next level. She is still at the beginning of what looks like a genuinely compelling collegiate career, but even now, at the start of her sophomore year with the Aztecs, the trajectory is unmistakable. This is an athlete who runs to win.

Santa Clarita Roots: Canyon High School and the Foothill League

Canyon High School sits in the Canyon Country community of Santa Clarita, about 40 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, at the edge of the Santa Clarita Valley where the Angeles National Forest begins to climb toward the San Gabriel Mountains. The school’s track and field program, which competes in the Foothill League of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section, has produced accomplished athletes over the decades — Olympic softball gold medalist Crystl Bustos and U.S. Olympic middle-distance runner Alysia Montaño are among its most decorated alumni. Into that tradition Mikaela Warr stepped, and she did not disappoint.

Her arrival in the Foothill League sprinting ranks was the beginning of four productive years. Over the course of her high school career at Canyon, she became a dominant force in the short sprints, developing a combination of raw speed and competitive composure that coaches in the region quickly recognized as exceptional. Head coach Chris Jackson guided her development throughout, and what he saw was an athlete who improved systematically and whose ceiling kept revealing itself to be higher than anyone had initially assumed.

Junior Year: Back-to-Back Titles Begin

The pattern of winning that would define Warr’s high school career was well established by the time she reached her junior year. She won the Foothill League title in the 100 meters as a junior, and she anchored Canyon’s 4×100 meter relay squad to the league championship in that event as well. Those back-to-back titles — in the individual sprint and the relay — would be repeated the following year, making her a four-time Foothill League champion across two events in two seasons: a clean sweep that spoke to both her individual talent and her role as a relay leader.

Beyond league competition, she was also building a summer résumé through the USATF junior development pipeline. At the 2022 USATF Southern California Association Junior Olympic Championships and the USATF Region 15 Junior Olympic Championships, she won gold medals. She would win gold medals at both of those same competitions again in 2023. Back-to-back gold at the Association and Regional level of the USATF Junior Olympic program across two consecutive summers is not an ordinary achievement — it reflects a runner who had already proven herself against the best youth competition in Southern California and the broader western United States, season after season.

Senior Year: A State Championship and a Stunning Arc of Improvement

If Warr’s junior season established her as one of the best sprinters in the Santa Clarita Valley and the Foothill League, her senior year in the 2023–24 school year elevated her into the conversation about the best in California. It was a season of progressive milestones, each one building toward a stunning finish at the state championship meet in Clovis.

Early in the spring 2024 season, she traveled to the prestigious Redondo Nike Track Invitational — one of the premier high school track invitational meets in California — and set a new personal record and meet record in the 100 meters, finishing first with a time of 11.56 seconds. The run stunned even her own coach. Jackson was on record noting that while the team knew she was ready to break her previous PR of 11.8 seconds, dropping all the way to 11.56 at a point in the season when she was not yet being trained to peak was a different kind of statement. She had, in his words, run away from a very talented field. “It was delightful to watch her improve by that much,” Jackson said.

The improvement did not stop there. As the season progressed through league finals and the CIF playoffs, Warr continued to sharpen, running faster and competing with the kind of focused clarity that championship-level athletics demands. She won her second consecutive Foothill League title in the 100 meters, and Canyon’s 4×100 relay — with Warr as a key contributor — took the relay league title as well.

The culmination came at Buchanan High School in Clovis, the traditional host of the CIF California State Track and Field Championships. There, on the state’s biggest high school stage, with hundreds of spectators, cameras, and the best prep athletes in California in attendance, Warr ran 11.41 seconds in the girls’ 100 meter dash final. It was a personal best — a time she later said she had not expected to run, adding with characteristic candor that she had been crying after the race, thanking God, because she genuinely hadn’t known the time was possible that day.

She won. In a photo-finish race where runner-up Mia Flowers of Serra High School also crossed the line at 11.41 seconds, Warr took the state title. It made her the CIF California State 100 meters champion for 2024 — the first Canyon cowboy to claim a state championship since Alysia Johnson (later Montaño) won in 2001, a gap of 23 years. On the same weekend, she competed in the 200 meters, the 4×100, and the 4×400 at the state meet, reflecting the breadth of her usefulness to the Canyon program across sprint events.

“I was crying, thank you Jesus, because I did not know that I was gonna run that time,” Warr said after the race. “You never know if you’re gonna win or lose, so I was just very thankful and I was crying. Wearing the medal, being called a state champion and a lot of awards coming to me, it was very overwhelming.”

Her high school personal bests entering college stood at 11.41 in the 100 meters, 23.85 in the 200 meters, and 59.44 in the 400 meters, alongside a 60 meter indoor best of 7.58. That 11.41 carries particular weight, coming as it did in a CIF State Championship final under the most pressure a California high school sprinter can experience.

Choosing San Diego State: Joining the Aztecs

After her senior season, Warr chose San Diego State University and its women’s track and field program — a program that competes in the Mountain West Conference under the direction of head coach Sheila Burrell. SDSU has a long tradition of success in the sprints and has consistently produced competitive Mountain West performers and occasional NCAA qualifiers. For a runner of Warr’s caliber, it offered a chance to step into a sprint group with genuine depth and compete at the conference level immediately.

She enrolled as a member of the class of 2028, a freshman in the 2024–25 academic year, and wasted no time making her presence felt in her very first collegiate competition.

Freshman Year at SDSU: An Immediate Impact (2024–25)

Warr made her collegiate debut at the Silver and Blue Invitational in Reno, Nevada, on January 10, 2025. In the 60 meter dash preliminaries — her very first race as a college athlete — she ran 7.48 seconds, qualifying for the final and impressing in her debut. She finished sixth in the finals in 7.50. SDSU’s athletics coverage specifically noted that she had “impressed in her first career collegiate race,” and Burrell called the overall sprint group’s performance a very good season opener.

The indoor season continued to develop her as a collegiate competitor. At the DeLoss Dodds Invitational at Abilene Christian, she qualified for the 60 meter finals again and finished fourth in 7.52. Her indoor season peaked at the Don Kirby Elite Invitational in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 14, 2025, where she ran a personal best of 24.41 in the 200 meters — her current indoor collegiate best in that event.

At the Mountain West Indoor Championships in Albuquerque in late February, she competed in the 200 meter prelims, running 24.57 as part of a deep San Diego State sprint contingent that included several more experienced runners. The meet underscored both the quality of the competition she was now facing weekly and the fact that she was already contributing meaningfully to a program with multiple conference-level sprinters.

The outdoor season in 2025 brought more opportunity and growth. Warr competed regularly in the 100 meters across SDSU’s spring schedule, logging times of 11.71 (wind-aided) at the Desert Heat Classic in Tucson and 12.13 at the Mt. SAC Relays, where she faced a field that included athletes from Stanford and other Pac-12/Power programs. At the Mountain West Outdoor Championships in Clovis — the same venue where she had won her state title the year before — she qualified for the finals of the 100 meters with a seventh-place prelim time of 11.77, making the final out of the field. She was also part of the SDSU 4×100 relay pool that was ranked 16th in the west region heading into the NCAA West First Round in College Station, Texas — giving the freshman her first exposure to the NCAA postseason environment as a contributor to a relay squad that included Shaquena Foote, Jada Pierre, Aji Mbye, and Olivia Hicks.

Into the 2025–26 Season: Sophomore Year Begins

Returning for her sophomore year with the Aztecs, Warr entered 2025–26 with a season of collegiate experience behind her and the physical development that a year in a college training environment typically brings. SDSU’s indoor season opened in January 2026 with a trip to Albuquerque for the MLK Invitational, and the Aztecs followed that with meets in Seattle and Nevada before the Mountain West Indoor Championships.

The outdoor season picked up in earnest when SDSU competed at the UCSD Triton Invitational in La Jolla over April 3 and 4, 2026. On day one, Warr ran the 200 meters, finishing 14th in 24.56 among a field featuring more than 100 competitors. On day two, she was seventh in the 100 meters in 11.84, competing in a deep field as SDSU sprinters Jada Pierre, Olivia Hicks, and others also raced. Both performances contributed to SDSU’s team scoring in a meet where the Aztecs earned multiple first-place victories across events.

Her sophomore season bests on the track continue to reflect a runner still building toward her peak in a training system that takes time to develop long-distance sprint power fully. What is clear is that the coaching staff values her as part of the relay pool and as a developing individual 100 and 200 meter competitor in one of the deeper sprint groups in the Mountain West.

Athletic Profile: What Makes Her Tick

Warr is a short-sprint specialist — a 100 meter runner at heart, with the acceleration mechanics and finishing speed to compete in the 200 as well. The range she showed in high school, where she ran everything from the 60 meters to the 400 and contributed to 4×400 relay squads, reflects the all-around athletic foundation that good sprint programs build early. In college, the focus has naturally narrowed to the 60/100/200 meter range, where her explosiveness translates most directly.

Her 60 meter collegiate best of 7.48, set in her very first collegiate race, is a strong indicator of that starting-phase quickness. Her collegiate 100 meter bests reflect the competitiveness of the Mountain West and the power-conference fields she is regularly racing against. And her high school 100 meter mark of 11.41 — set under championship conditions — remains the standard she is chasing to match and surpass at the collegiate level.

The sprint group Warr trains within at SDSU is one of the program’s signature strengths. Shaquena Foote, a senior who regularly contends at the Mountain West Championships and has competed at NCAA regional meets, Aji Mbye, Olivia Hicks, and Charlize James all provide the kind of training environment where a developing sprinter is pushed consistently. That competition in practice tends to accelerate development, and Burrell has built a program that consistently produces conference finalists and occasional NCAA qualifiers in the sprints and hurdles.

NIL and Social Media

As a member of the SDSU athletics NIL program, Warr has a presence in the school’s official NIL merchandise store, where she offers branded SDSU Track and Field apparel under her name — including hoodies, sweatshirts, and t-shirts. This puts her alongside teammates like Sydney Ash, Jordan Leveque, Keira Bennett, and Xiamara Young in SDSU’s athlete storefront model, a standard feature of the current collegiate NIL landscape.

On Instagram, she is active under the handle @mikaelawarr, which is also directly linked from her official SDSU athletics profile page. Her social media presence reflects the life of a student-athlete balancing training, competition travel, and the experience of attending a major university in one of the country’s most vibrant cities. No external brand sponsorship arrangements are publicly disclosed beyond the SDSU NIL merchandise relationship.

Context: The Program She’s Part Of

San Diego State women’s track and field, under Burrell’s leadership, has been a consistent Mountain West contender. The 2024–25 team sent ten athletes to the NCAA West First Round, reflecting the program’s depth. SDSU’s sprint and hurdle groups have been particularly strong, with James and Pierre both competing at the conference and regional levels, and Foote establishing herself as one of the Mountain West’s top 400 meter performers. Within that environment, Warr occupies the role of a developing short sprinter with significant upside — a role the program has successfully developed before.

The Mountain West itself sits in an interesting position in women’s collegiate sprinting. While the Pac-12 programs — now scattered across the Big Ten and other conferences — traditionally command more national attention, Mountain West sprinters regularly post times competitive with regional and even national conversation, and the conference championships each spring are legitimately fast. Competing weekly against that level of opposition is shaping Warr into a different kind of athlete than she was in Santa Clarita, where she was consistently the best runner on the track.

A Program, a City, a Future

There is something fitting about Mikaela Warr’s path landing her at San Diego State. Santa Clarita is a suburb built on California optimism, full of ambitious families who arrived looking for space and good schools and a track to run on. San Diego is something different — a coastal city with a different energy, a place where athletes from across the country converge at a school with a serious athletic culture. The jump from Foothill League champion to Mountain West competitor is exactly the kind of leap that state champions make when they’re ready for it, and Warr made it on day one of her collegiate career by posting a personal best 7.48 in her very first race.

She is a sophomore now, with two years of college behind her and two ahead. By the time she finishes at SDSU, the 11.41 she ran at Buchanan High School to win the state title may look like the beginning of a much longer story, rather than its climax. Everything in her trajectory — the four-time Foothill League championships, the USATF Junior Olympic gold medals, the state title won under pressure, the immediate collegiate impact — points in the same direction. Mikaela Warr has always found a way to run a little bit faster than anyone expected. There is no reason to think she is done doing that.

Mikaela Warr — Career Snapshot

• Hometown: Santa Clarita, California (Canyon Country)
• High School: Canyon High School (Canyon Country, CA) — Class of 2024
• College: San Diego State University — Sophomore (Class of 2028)
• Events: 60m, 100m, 200m (Sprints)
• High school coach: Chris Jackson
• College coach: Sheila Burrell (SDSU)
• High school PRs: 60m — 7.58; 100m — 11.41; 200m — 23.85; 400m — 59.44
• Collegiate PRs (indoor): 60m — 7.48 (Silver & Blue Invitational, Reno, Jan. 10, 2025); 200m — 24.41 (Don Kirby Elite Invitational, Albuquerque, Feb. 14, 2025)
• Key achievements: 2024 CIF California State 100m Champion; four-time Foothill League champion; back-to-back USATF SoCal Association and Region 15 Junior Olympic gold medalist (2022 and 2023); member of 2025 SDSU 4×100 relay pool (16th in NCAA West Region)
• Instagram: @mikaelawarr
• NIL: SDSU official athlete merchandise store (nil.store/sdsu)