There have been sibling rivalries in athletics before, but what Mia and Mariah Maxwell are doing goes considerably beyond rivalry. At the USATF U20 Championships in Eugene, Oregon, on Thursday, the twins from Atascocita High School in Humble, Texas, completed a double sweep of the women’s sprint events that will spark conversation for years. Mia won the 200m in 22.49 seconds with Mariah second in 22.86, following up a 1-2 finish in the 100m earlier in the meet in the same order. Two events, two gold medals for Mia, two silver medals for Mariah, and an achievement that has no real precedent in the history of American junior athletics. 

The Eugene sweep is the capstone of a journey that got underway only two years ago. Before May 2024, neither twin had qualified for the 6A State Championships in an individual sprint. Mariah had run 24.26 in the 200m, Mia 11.65 in the 100m. Then they signed with coach Danny McCray at APXP Performance in Katy, Houston, and it was a different story.  

McCray had been tipped off by their jumps coach, Marlin Hargrove, who had spent over a year telling him these two needed his attention. “I knew after watching them the first week they were there. I told their parents what they would end up being and they didn’t believe me at first,” McCray said.

That first summer with APXP, Mariah improved sharply to 11.53 in the 100m and 23.82 in the 200m, winning her first national title at the USATF Junior Olympics. Mia was injured and hasn’t been able to train properly until the fall, but the base that McCray established with both of them, technical, dietary, and psychological, has been the backbone of all that has come after. 

“Without Coach McCray, I don’t think we would know pretty much anything technical with the sport. Before we met him, we were just out there running,” Mia said.

The first big headline was on March 1, at the USATF Indoor Championships in New York. The twins finished second and third in the women’s 60m behind professional Jacious Sears, with Mia tying the high school record at 7.13 and Mariah one hundredth of a second back at 7.14. 

“It was definitely kind of unreal. I didn’t really get a chance to process it until the meet was over,” Mariah said. For Mia, the reality landed on the plane home. “I was like, ‘Wow, I really just did that.’ And it was really cool, and I think it made the moment even better sharing it with Mariah.” 

The Nike Indoor Nationals in March 2026 saw another 1-2 result, this time in the 200m. Mariah took the win in 22.84, and Mia finished second in 23.04. The USATF U20 sweep in Eugene is the next step in a string of results that have been accumulating for more than a year now. Same pattern, different magnitude depending on the stage. 

Mia enters the championships as a four-time high school national champion, the US high school indoor record holder in the 60m, and the fifth-fastest in American high school history over 100m with a personal best of 11.04. Mariah’s 200m personal best of 22.44, run earlier in 2026, places her fifth on the all-time US list in the event. Both sisters are Nike Elite Programme athletes and members of the National Honor Society. McCray, who has watched them make the one-hour-forty-minute drive each way from Humble to Katy for training countless times, does not mince his words about what they represent. “They’re the most disciplined athletes I’ve ever known,” he said. 

Their long-term target for 2026 is the World Athletics U20 Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene in August, the same venue where they just completed their national sweep.

A journey that rarely happened

The Maxwell twins did not grow up as sprint prodigies. They tried volleyball first but failed to make the tryouts. They then dabbled in basketball for a while before coaches saw how fast they were on the basketball court and directed them toward track. “We started winning, and it kind of just took off from there,” Mariah said.

It was Hargrove, their first jumps coach, who identified something deeper. “He immediately knew that we had something special. He was the first coach that was like, ‘These twins definitely have something in them. They just need help getting it out,” Mia said.  

The decision to stop competing for Atascocita in their senior year to focus fully on their individual development was not easy, but it has been vindicated comprehensively. 

“In the sport, you have to be a little selfish at times. You have to think about yourself and your future down the road,” Mia said. 

The next step in development is the World U20 Championships in August. McCray, for his part, has one more detail worth noting about the family: their ten-year-old sister Madison, he says, might be even better.