Future Red Raider star Tate Taylor is an under-20 world champion in the 100m and 200m dashes, along with the 4x100-meter relay.
LUBBOCK - Tate Taylor, the coveted Texas Tech track and field signee, heads to Lubbock after ending his high school career with three gold medals draped around his neck.
The San Antonio native won the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and anchored the 4x400-meter relay for the United States at the World Under-20 Championships held in Eugene, Oregon.
Taylor's final leg of the 38.16-second relay, which included Blake Hamilton, Dillon Mitchell and Kyler Brown, helped set a new under-20 world record.
That wasn't all the history.
Taylor became the first American ever to win the sprint double in the 100 and 200. His blazing 19.83 in the latter is a new championship record, and he set a new personal best of 9.94 in the 100 just days earlier.
With the LA 2028 Olympics coming into view, people in the track world are questioning whether Taylor would be better off entering the professional ranks now rather than enrolling in college. The 18-year-old's times are certainly good enough to compete and build toward a run at making Team USA.
"He's registered [for classes]," Tech track coach Wes Kittley told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal jokingly, "So, hopefully he doesn't run too fast this next week."
Texas Tech's interest in Taylor came many months ago, when the star sprinter set national high school records in the 100 and 200, then took home gold at the U20 national championships in June before competing on the world stage.
Taylor got accostumed to Eugene's historic Hayward Field, home to the Oregon Ducks' track program, when he ran a 19.75, remarkably into a head wind at the Diamond League's Prefontaine Classic. The effort bested Olympic 200-meter champion Letsile Tebogo.
"I'm shocked he's not going to turn pro," Kittley said after Taylor's professional debut, "but he wants to go to college, he's saying, and he's determined. He came [to campus in mid-July], did his registration and got his classes, but if he runs something crazy ... I don't know. He already has ... 19.75, my goodness.
"If we get him here and he's here a year - that's all I'm counting on, because if he runs as fast as we think he might - then he's going to turn pro."
"The process was wonderful," Taylor said previously about his recruitment. "The process was really just me continuing to keep my faith, keep my resilience in God and everybody who hit me up - all the college, all the coaches. I truly do appreciate and respect them. That’s what really pushed me to be the best I could be and go where I’m going."
Texas Tech has not yet released its 2026-27 track and field schedule, and it is uncertain whether Taylor will join the program late after a busy summer of competition.
Indoor season typically begins the first week of December. Last year, Tech athletes ran at the Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener in Boston to begin a season that would end with multiple Big 12 Conference championships.
"I don't know that he'll come more than a year," Kittley added. "But he has told me - his daddy's told me - they were here for orientation [and said] 'Everyone wants us to turn pro. We don't want to turn pro. We've got an NIL deal with Nike. We do not have to turn pro.
"'We want to go to college and be a kid a little bit longer.'"
