This past Saturday, the UTSA Track and Field team hosted their second and final home meet of the outdoor season, the Roadrunner Invitational. Bolstered by strong performances throughout, the team took home 10 gold medals, five each from the men and women. 

Highlighting the day’s action for UTSA was Lacee Barnes. The senior had an outstanding meet, collecting two gold medals on the day. Barnes first picked up a victory in the shot put, registering the best throw by a collegian during the event with a toss of 15.53 meters. Barnes went on later in the day to conquer the discus with a winning throw of 51.65 meters. 

Elsewhere on the women’s side, the Roadrunners performed extremely well. 

Geraldy Barron took home the silver medal in the women’s 200-meter with a wind-aided time of 24.97. In the 400 and 800-meters, Brooke Lomax took home a pair of bronze medals in 58.19 and 2:45.21 respectively. The ‘Runners finished first and second in the 100-meter hurdles, with Alanah Yukich taking the victory over Maren Wilms by two seconds exactly with a winning time of 13.98. Wilms added to her silver medal haul in the women’s high jump when she finished in second with a best of 1.61 meters. The Roadrunners took first and third on the podium in the women’s long jump. Ingeborg Gruenwald won the event with a leap of 6.35 meters and Danielle Spence took third with a jump of 5.68 meters. 

Joining Barnes on the podium in the shot put was Zoe Shanklin, who took second with a throw of 14.35 meters. After just missing the podium in the discus, Acacia Astwood took second in the hammer throw after her best throw of 56.27 meters. Rounding out the notable performances on the women’s side, UTSA swept the podium in the javelin throw with Marilis Remmel besting Sigrid Kleive and Wilms with a winning throw of 46.85 meters. 

On the men’s side, the Roadrunners experienced similar success. In the men’s 100-meter, Brice Chabot and Anthony took home second and third in 10.71 and 10.88 respectively. In the 200-meter, Mike Roth raced to a gold medal with a time of 21.27 and Lirim Emerllahu finished third in 21.53. The 400-meter continued the successful day for the men’s track team as Noah Rhodes won the silver with a time of 49.41. In the 800-meter, JD Corona took bronze with a 2:01.06 and narrowly missed a podium spot in the 1500-meter, but Michael Paredes snatched a bronze of his own in that event with a time of 4:00.72. In the 3,000-meter, Jake Smith took silver with a time of 9:08.67, rounding off a solid day for the Roadrunners in the distance events. 

Gabriel Green secured third place in the men’s 400-meter hurdles with a time of 54.98. In the high jump, Grant Szalek soared to a gold medal with a winning jump of 2.02 meters, while Joel McFarlane took home a bronze medal with a jump of 1.85 meters. In the men’s pole vault, UTSA took advantage of having the only athletes competing by taking first through fourth in the event. Jonathan Barraza’s vault of 4.70 meters was enough to best his teammates Jack Turner, Marcus Ramirez and Justin Wright. In the long jump, Christiaan Le Roux beat his teammate Jemuel Miller for the gold, with Miller’s best jump of 7.14 meters being edged by Le Roux’s 7.35 gold-winning leap. In the shot put, Jorge Ayala won the gold medal with his best throw of 16.64 meters while Angel Robles took the bronze with a throw of 15.93 meters. Meanwhile, in the discus, Paul Bouey secured another bronze for UTSA with a throw of 49.49 meters. Rounding out the action for the day, Robles just beat out Ayala for the bronze in the hammer throw with a toss of 43.85 meters. 

UTSA will look to carry over the momentum of this strong showing when they travel to College Station, Texas, this week to take part in the Texas A&M Team Invitational on April 8-9.