TEMPE, Arizona – Texas A&M's outdoor season starts with the Baldy Castillo Invitational hosted by Arizona State on Friday and Saturday. The Aggie women enter this portion of the season as defending NCAA team champions while the A&M men are the defending SEC champions.
Schools entered in the Castillo Invitational include Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, UC Riverside, and Washington. Friday's events include the hammer throw at 1 p.m. along with the 1,500 meters starting at 7:30 p.m. The Saturday portion of the meet begins at 9 a.m. with the discus while running events start at 1 p.m.
Results from the meet are available at http://finishedresults.trackscoreboard.com/#/results while a live stream of the meet is available at http://pac-12.com/videos/arizona-state-university-2.
A pair of individual national champions from the Aggie women's team will open the outdoor season in their specialty event. The duo includes Shelbi Vaughan in the discus and Shamier Little in the 400 hurdles.
Vaughan will throw in the second flight of the discus against a pair of throwers from Arizona State – Maggie Ewen and Alex Hartig – as well as a trio from Oklahoma – Alexandra Morgan, Katie Foster and Chamaya Turner. Last season Vaughan improved her A&M school record to 208-8 (63.60) in winning the SEC Championship and won the NCAA title with a mark of 196-11 (60.02).
Little will race in the first of two sections in the 400 hurdles. Last year she won the NCAA Championship in a school record time of 55.07 and went on to claim the USATF Junior title in a meet record 55.43. Little capped her first season with the Aggies with a World Junior title in 55.66 as she became just the third American to win the 400 hurdles.
A third returning A&M individual NCAA champion, Kamaria Brown in the 200 meters, is scheduled to run in the 4x100 relay with Jennifer Madu, Ashton Purvis and Aaliyah Brown. The Aggies won the NCAA 4x100 relay title last season in 42.80 seconds with Madu, Purvis and K. Brown running the first three legs.
In 2013 A&M set the 4x100 meet record at the Castillo Invitational with a 43.31 clocking as Purvis and K. Brown ran the second and third leg.
The Aggie men return a pair of NCAA Outdoor champions with Deon Lendore in the 400 meters and the 4x400 relay.
Lendore, who is scheduled to run on the 4x100 and 4x400 relays this weekend, won the 2014 SEC 400m title in a school record of 44.36 after opening the outdoor season in the 400 with a then career best of 44.90 during the Sun Angel Classic meet hosted by Arizona State in April. Lendore completed an undefeated season with a 45.02 to claim the NCAA Championship.
Two legs of the Aggie 4x400 return from the 2014 outdoor season where A&M set a meet record of 3:01.19 in winning the SEC Championship and then set a school record with a 2:59.60 NCAA victory, recording the second fastest collegiate time ever as they missed the collegiate record by 0.01.
The Aggie 4x400 recently won the NCAA Indoor title with a collegiate record of 3:02.86, bettering the collegiate record of 3:03.20 they set in 2014. The 3:02.86 is the fourth fastest time on the all-time world indoor list.
SEC 400 hurdle champion Gregory Coleman will run in the first section of the event with teammates Aikan Graham and Kenneth Minkah. Coleman, who ran the first leg of A&M's victory in the NCAA Indoor 4x400, set a pair of career best times in the hurdles last season. He clocked 49.88 for the SEC title and 49.60 during the NCAA West preliminary rounds.
The javelin will feature a crew of 10 Aggies. In the men's field are Devin Bogert and Ioannis Kyriazis while the women's field includes eight A&M throwers, three of which are heptathletes.
Annie Kunz throws in the first of three flights of the javelin while the second flight includes Audrey Malone, Jena Hemann and Kristen Clark. The final flight will feature Maggie Malone, Kendall Munoz, Krystyn Bradley, and Ashtin Zamzow.
Joining the pair of Aggies in the men's javelin is A&M school record holder Sam Humphreys, who won the 2013 NCAA title and the 2012 Olympic Trials. Humphreys set the Castillo meet record of 267-1 (81.40) in 2013.
The men's pole vault includes a field of 30 for the Aggie trio of Chase Wolfle, Carl Johansson and Audie Wyatt to maneuver through. The meet record of 17-8 ½ (5.40) was set by Minnesota's Zach Siegmier last season.
Wolfle cleared 18-0 ½ (5.50) twice during the indoor season, placing third at the SEC Championships and fifth in the NCAA Championships. During the 2014 outdoor season Wolfle set a career best of 18-3 (5.56) for third place in the SEC and tied for fifth in the NCAA meet with an 18-0 ½ clearance.
Isaac Spencer, the SEC steeplechase runner-up in 2014, leads a crew of four Aggies in the 2,000-meter steeplechase. Joining Spencer, who won the 2013 Castillo race in 5:55.55, are Aaron Murray, Colin Stoeber and Ryan Teel.
On Friday, a majority of A&M distance runners move down in distance to start the outdoor season. In the women's 1,500 the Aggie group includes Grace Fletcher and Hillary Montgomery in the second section while the first section has Karis Jochen, Laura Craig, Haley Deakins and Lauren Fontana. Meanwhile, Katie Willard moves up from her 800m distance to run in the first section of the 1,500.
The men's third section of the 1,500 will feature the A&M trio of Alex Riba, Spencer and Cameron Villarreal. Running in the second section are Ryan Miller, Murray, Nathan Ricketts, Colin Slattery, Teel, and Austin Wells.
Competing in the hammer on Friday afternoon are Austin Cook in the men's field with Alison Ondrusek and Carissa van Beek in the women's field.