HOUSTON – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi track & field team got its 2026 season started on the right note at the Leonard Hilton Memorial Invitational on Saturday, seeing multiple different athletes either make their way into the school record books or improve their placements on a day that was highlighted by a new all-time women's shot put record by junior
Natalia Rankin-Chitar.
"Across the board, the team competed hard," Islanders head coach
Bryan Jackson said. "With any opening meet, we are going to leave with a lot of work to do and things to clean up, but this group has things we can't coach up like grit and a great competitive spirit. I am really excited about what this team is going to look like the next time we have the opportunity to compete!"
Rankin-Chitar came out of the gates firing in the shot put, starting off by reaching 15.27m on her third throw to clinch her spot in the finals. Once the final nine got underway, she proceeded to blow this mark out of the water, stepping up for her first throw of the round and uncorking an incredible toss of 15.90m that ended up securing her the overall victory in the event. This was nearly a full meter better than her high mark of 14.92m that she reached at last month's preseason McFerrin Invitational in College Station, and it easily surpassed the previous school record of 15.11m that current graduate assistant
Emily Malouf accomplished to win the gold medal at last year's Southland Conference Indoor Championships. This throw also put Rankin-Chitar on the national radar, as it currently ranks at No. 15 in all of Division I so far in the young season.
Rankin-Chitar's accomplishment was the highlight of what was an overall strong day for associate head coach/throws coach
Andrew Glass's unit, with the group continuing to assault the program's record books in Glass' second year at the helm. In the very first event of the day, senior
Cyan Green took home a second-place finish in the women's weight throw, reaching 18.69m to kick off her defense of the gold medal she won in the event at the 2025 SLC Indoor Championships. On the men's side, freshman
Samson Black unleashed a toss of 17.34m, which set his new personal best by nearly a meter and a half and helped him rise all the way up to No. 2 in program history, behind only the 18.13m mark reached by current junior
Emmanuel Ekuma at the same meet last year. Finally, Black also hit 15.39 in the shot put, just shy of his career high and good for sixth place out of 26 competitors.
As for the other half of the field events, the jumps group also had a few notable performances, starting with junior
Alicia Long in the high jump. In her first meet with the team, Long maxed out at 1.60m, which marked the sixth-best in the field and moved her into a tie for sixth place all-time in program history. Later in the day, sophomore
Armando Rivera accomplished an even more impressive feat in the men's triple jump, tying for second in the field and debuting all the way up at third in Islanders history after leaping a far mark of 14.62m. Like Rankin-Chitar, this also got Rivera ranked nationally, with the Corpus Christi native currently sitting in a tie for 58
th overall in Division I.
To wrap up the day, A&M-Corpus Christi managed to finish well during the track portion of the meet despite sending a smaller group of competitors. The most notable of these came in the men's 1000m, where sophomores
Dillon Smith and
Philip Jensen e Castro made their way up to the top two spots in school history with times of 2:26.81 and 2:34.08 respectively. This marks Smith's second indoor school record of his young career with the team, with his other one coming in the 800m run on February 14 of last year. Beyond this, senior
Ewan Wheelwright took home second in the mile run with a time of 4:18.32, and sophomore
Kenya Ford logged a sixth-place finish in the men's 400m with a time of 50.58s that narrowly missed cracking the school's top 10 in his first meet with the program.
The Islanders will now take some time to prepare for their next time out before then returning to action on January 30 and 31, making their way back up to Houston for the Robert Platt Invitational.
#ShakasUp
