SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi track & field team got its outdoor season started on the right foot at the UTSA Invitational on Friday, with its throwers kicking things off by picking up a pair of podium finishes and taking down a number of different school records.
"It's great to be outdoors!" said head coach
Bryan Jackson. "With the success we had indoors, I am excited to see how we continue to grow as a team. The throws group kicked off our season with great energy and a lot of top 10 performances and school records. It was fun watching them compete today!"
The day for the Islanders started in the javelin throw, with a trio of competitors on the men's side showing out in their debut event of the season. The strongest of these performances came from senior
Izac Canchola, who in his first-ever meet with the team took home both a gold medal and a new program record after reaching a best throw of 64.62m. Coming in right behind Canchola were freshman
Jordan Bowling and sophomore
Caeden Croft, with the former debuting at No. 6 in school history in his first taste of collegiate action at a mark of 56.00m and the latter coming in at No. 8 after reaching 51.29m. The women also saw a very impressive performance in the same event, as after competing in multiple different throwing events during indoor season, senior
Katie Long returned to her main discipline and immediately reached the second spot in the A&M-Corpus Christi records book with a throw of 38.82m.
Following this came the shot put, which saw another school record fall courtesy of sophomore
Emmanuel Ekuma, who reached 17.05m to top the old best set back in 2017. This marked Ekuma's third different No. 1 ranking on the Islanders' leaderboards this season, as he also did so in both the weight throw and the shot put during the indoor portion of the year. The men also saw freshman
Riley Wampler crack the record book in eighth place in the event after throwing a high of 14.05m, while on the women's side, junior
Cyan Green and senior
Emily Malouf cracked their own list the event in third and fifth place respectively with throws of 13.90m and 13.42m.
For Green, this was the warmup to an even better showing in the women's hammer throw, as she went on to take home the silver medal in the meet while also claiming the new Islanders record with a throw of 55.22m. She wasn't the only one to break into the program record book either, with the trio of sophomore
Breyunna Dowell, Malouf and Long also doing so at the fifth, sixth and eighth spots right after her. For the men, Ekuma capped off his great day by reaching second in A&M-Corpus Christi history with a mark of 48.35m, and freshmen
Nico Silva and
Erik Castillo came in not far behind in fourth and fifth place with throws of 40.92m and 40.33m respectively.
The Islanders will now try to close out the UTSA Invitational on a high note on Saturday, beginning the final day of competition with the field events at 11 a.m. before transitioning to the track starting at 2 p.m.
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