Senior Teddy Williams clocked a season-best 6.61 in defeating Texas A&M's Gerald Phiri on Friday night.
NEW YORK CITY — Two-time All-American Teddy Williams made a triumphant return to The Big Apple on Friday, as the senior from Tyler won the 60-meter dash at the prestigious New Balance Invitational.
Racing in a field that included two of the top five sprinters in the country — Texas A&M's Gerald Phiri and Tennessee's Evander Wells — Williams crossed the line a season-best and NCAA provisional 6.61 in defeating Phiri by a mere one one-thousandth of a second. He moved up to a second-place tie on the national leaderboard and now trails only Rondel Sorrillo of Kentucky, who clocked a 6.60 in winning the Virginia Tech Elite meet in Blacksburg, Va., on Friday. It was a year ago at this meet that Williams had his coming-out party, so to speak, when he set a Southland Conference record with his runner-up 6.61 to then-national leader Trindon Holliday of LSU.
Meanwhile, the Roadrunners closed out the night with an outstanding effort from their distance medley relay team of juniors Brandon Chiuminetta and Canel Cole, senior Corey Vargas and sophomore Albert Cardenas. The quartet passed the baton in 10:07.36, which not only ranks as the second-best performance in program history, but it also vaulted the squad to the top of the 2010 Southland standings. Previous leader McNeese State is now nearly nine seconds behind the time established by the Birds on Friday night.
UTSA also received a pair of strong performances from junior John Matthews, who earned bronze medals in both the 200m and 60m hurdles. The Baytown native circled the banked oval in a personal-best 22.10 in winning the first of 11 heats. He then won the fifth and final hurdles prelim in 8.32 three-and-a-half hours later.
The two-day meet wraps up on Saturday at the historic 168th Street Armory in Upper Manhattan.