SAN ANTONIO — After taking a week off, the UTSA track & field teams will return to action at this weekend's Howie Ryan Invitational & Multis. The two-day meet is scheduled to get underway on Friday morning at Bill Yeoman Fieldhouse on the campus of the University of Houston.
The event will feature 17 NCAA Division I teams from around the nation. Athletes from Central Arkansas, Grambling, Houston Baptist, Incarnate Word, Lamar, New Orleans, Northwestern State, Prairie View A&M, Rice, Sam Houston State, SMU, Stephen F. Austin, Texas, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Texas State will join the Roadrunners and host Cougars along with countless other club teams and individual athletes.
Field event action is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on Friday and will continue throughout the day, while the pentathlon will start at noon and running events will commence at 4:30 p.m. Field events will resume at 9 a.m. the following morning with running competition starting three hours later.
Branden Perry won the high jump title and he led a total of five podium finishes for the UTSA men at the Jan. 17 Texas A&M Team Invitational.
Perry cleared 6-9 ½ (2.07m) and tied with UT Arlington's Roland Sales for the top spot in the standings, but the freshman from Mansfield picked up the first gold medal of his young career by winning a jump off.
Meanwhile, Shantel Swift and Stephanie Wangui both raced to third-place finishes to lead the women at the one-day meet in College Station.
Swift clocked the second-fastest 400 meters performance in program history when she circled the Gilliam Indoor Track & Field Stadium banked oval two times in a career-best 56.03 en route to a bronze medal.
Wangui recorded a time of 2:14.75 in the 800m, which was her second top three finish to open the campaign, and that was just 20 one-hundredths of a second behind Baylor's Maggie Montoya, who won the event in 2:14.55.