The Supreme Yasmeen

When spectators saw the 48 women who took the track to compete in the 400-meter hurdles at the East First Round regional meet began their race, many of them may had not heard of Yasmeen Tinsley of Monmouth.

Tinsley is just one of two women from her school that qualified for this year's meet. The other is high jumper Victoria Chaynov who is back for the second time in three seasons.

Now in her junior year, Winners Only first learned of Tinsley, a native of Arlington, Virginia, when she became a bit of a viral sensation on Instagram during her freshman season which was 2021-22. Armed with a thousand-watt smile, Tinsley's post of her freshman media day has earned over 37,700 likes on Instagram to date. She's amassed over 46,300 followers on that platform and 54,200 on TikTok, with her most popular post reaching over four and a half million views.

On May 23, in Lexington, Kentucky, Tinsley took the first step of letting the collegiate world of track and field know that she is more than a social media darling. On the opening day of competition at the east regional she ran a career best time of 57.05 which was the 11th best overall finish. Today (May 25), she and 24 other athletes will battle for the top 12 spots that will advance to the NCAA Championships.

On May 24, we caught up with Tinsley on her day off during the weekend to talk about the moment that she is in and how she is handling things.

Winners Only: It's been fun watching you over the years. You've made it to your first east regional meet. We always knew you would make it. Did you always know and how hard was the road to get here?

Yasmeen Tinsley: Well I've been close these past few years being just over that 48th person mark. Last spring I didn't quite finish the season the way I knew I could've in the 400-meter hurdles so I feel like this year was really just my year to prove myself. I've been working extremely hard to get here. I've been working with my coach to be very strategic in how we set up the season and go about my training to keep my body in perfect shape to [run my personal record] here and still feel healthy to keep going. It definitely worked out well.

You ran the best time in school history to advance and give yourself a shot to qualify for the NCAA meet. You were also in the same heat with the fastest 400-meter hurdler in the NCAA, Savannah Sutherland. Does doing those two things give you more of an awareness and confidence on what it takes to advance to the NCAA Championships.

I definitely think being in that heat made all the difference. I came into this meet seeded 25th and I am going into the quarterfinals with the 11th best time. I definitely think being in that heat with all those talented girls and the previous NCAA 400-meter hurdles champ made that possible. I had confidence that I would run fast in that race but I had no idea how much faster it was going to be than my previous personal record. I can just hope that it goes the same way on Saturday.

How important is it for your program to be represented on this level. Do you feel like this is an opportunity for future collegiate athletes to see that Monmouth is a place that they can thrive?

I think it's a huge opportunity to get Monmouth's name out there, especially as a mid-major school. It's a great program. I love my coaching and as you can see, they have the skills to get their athletes to this level and I have the confidence that they will continue to do so.

You're a day away from a chance to get to the NCAA Championships. Can tomorrow get here soon enough? How are you spending the day before the biggest race of your life?

I'm definitely excited. I feel like I'm trying to spend most of today to relax my mind, just getting prepared really. I know what I have to do Saturday. I think the biggest part of today is to keep my head in a good space where I can go into tomorrow confident and ready to execute. Hopefully that will get me another big personal record and we'll just see what happens from there.