Aggies travel to San Antonio for Roadrunner Invitational

Friday, March 22

San Antonio, Texas

All Day

Texas A&M

UTSA Roadrunner Invitational

Photo by: Errol Anderson

Mar 21, 2019 | Track and Field

UTSA heat sheets UTSA schedule Meet records

SAN ANTONIO – Texas A&M track and field begins a stretch of seven consecutive weeks competing in the state of Texas with the UTSA Roadrunner Invitational on Friday and Saturday at the Park West Athletics Complex.

Next week the Aggies travel to Austin for the Texas Relays, followed by four home meets at Texas A&M's new E.B. Cushing Stadium along with a visit to Baylor for the Michael Johnson Invitational in late April.

"Having meets at home and close to home changes everything for us," said Texas A&M head coach Pat Henry, in his 15^th season with the Aggies. "It helps create the kind of things we want to have. We want our parents to be able to see our athletes. When someone comes to Texas A&M, if you're from the state of Texas, parents are going to get to watch your child compete numerous times. I think that's important."

Teams scheduled to compete in the team scored Roadrunner Invitational include Akron, James Madison, Oklahoma, Stephen F. Austin, Texas, Texas A&M - Corpus Christi, Texas State, UT Rio Grande Valley and UTSA. The Park West Athletics Complex is located at 8000 North Loop 1604 West in San Antonio.

Live results will be available online at http://sidearmstats.com/utsa/track/.

Texas A&M enters the meet as the highest nationally ranked school outdoors with the men and women both No. 2 in the outdoor preseason national team rating index released this week. Other teams in the Roadrunner Invitational nationally ranked among the top 50 include Texas, No. 8 men and No. 19 women; Akron, No. 33 men and No. 47 women; as well as Oklahoma, No. 26 women and No. 44 men.

"We have more kids competing this week since we can put more kids on a bus than a plane," noted Henry. "That gives a lot more opportunity, since we are only traveling a couple of hours away from here. Once again it's what we are trying to do, give more people an opportunity so we can figure out who we are.

"We know who our scholarship people are, but you can't have a SEC team on 12 scholarships. You need to have people who are coming out and trying to earn their way onto a team. So, you have to give them opportunities to compete. That's what we are doing by staying close to home during the outdoor season."

Friday's schedule for the Aggies includes the hammer (Josh Brown, KJ Grimes) and shot put (Nathan Hite, Gabe Oladipo) at 1 p.m. and the javelin (Hite) at 5 p.m. The women's division of the shot put (Parker Clay, Tyra Gittens, Celine Markert) and javelin (Jenna Ellis, Gittens, Markert, Natalie Scheifele) follow the men. On Saturday, field events begin at 11 a.m. while track events start at 2 p.m.

Tyra Gittens, the SEC Field Athlete of the Week, will compete in the shot put and javelin on Friday and then the long jump on Saturday. Jace Comick, the SEC Runner of the Week, races at 100m and 200m again this weekend along with 4x100 relay duty.

NCAA Indoor long jump silver medalist Deborah Acquah contests the triple jump while Jacob Wooten, NCAA Indoor bronze medalist, leads a crew of seven Aggies in the pole vault.

Akron's Matthew Ludwig established a meet record of 18-4 ½ (5.60) in the pole vault last year and returns to defend his title among a field of 31 vaulters.

Ilolo Izu, who set the 400m hurdle meet record of 50.42 last season, races in the event for the first time this outdoor season and is joined by Infinite Tucker, the SEC silver medalist in 2018, as well as Tyler Hart and DeWitt Thomas. The Aggie squad will all race in the third section, occupying four of the nine lanes.

Izu's meet record is one of 13 Texas A&M currently holds in the Roadrunner Invitational, five of which were set last season.

Syaira Richardson and Tierra Robinson-Jones contest their initial 400m outdoors this weekend. They each produced career best times of 52.09 and 52.52 during indoors. After sweeping the top three places in the 100m hurdles last weekend, the trio of Gabrielle McDonald, Chinyere Njoku and Kennedy Smith are joined by Taryn Milton.

Following a debut in the 3,000m steeplechase, Brady Grant will race in the 2,000m steeplechase where the meet record of 6:01.31 is held by current Aggie Zephyr Seagraves.

There will be four A&M runners in the women's 2,000m steeplechase where the meet record of 7:02.14 was set by current Aggie Ashton Hutcherson. The crew racing includes Julia Black, Megan Hopper, Michala Janssen and Amelia McElhinney. The Aggie distance runners will also have seven women and three men in the 3,000m.