SAN ANTONIO — UTSA will host its third and final home meet of the outdoor campaign this weekend when it welcomes Houston Baptist, Lamar, Texas-Rio Grande Valley and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to the Alamo City for the Roadrunners Invitational. The two-day event is scheduled to get underway on Friday afternoon at Park West Athletics Complex.
All the action is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. on Friday with the hammer and shot put. The remainder of the field events and all running disciplines are scheduled to start at noon the following day (click here for a complete meet schedule).
UTSA's track & field facility boasts the only Olympic-quality running surface in South Texas. Marked with wider lanes and enhanced subsurface support, the track was constructed to host national and international meets, as well as NCAA Championship events. The stadium currently includes 1,000 seats and a spacious state-of-the-art press box. Open areas surrounding the facility have been designed to house temporary seating up to 10,000 for national and international competitions.
Randy Bermea raced to second place in the 400-meter hurdles last Friday night to lead the Roadrunners men at last weekend's Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays. The junior from Harlingen, who recorded the fastest preliminary heat time on Thursday, cleared the barriers in 51.18 en route to his silver medal. In Thursday's prelims, he circled the Mike A. Myers Stadium oval in a personal-best 50.56 in topping the field of 79 hurdlers. That mark was three-tenths of second better than his previous career best of 50.86 registered during his sophomore season at Cal and the 50.88 he recorded two weeks ago at the season-opening UTSA Invitational. Bermea now ranks eighth nationally this spring (2nd C-USA).
Meanwhile, UTSA's 1,600-meter relay also earned a silver medal with the fourth-fastest time in program history on Saturday. Jennifer Arinze, Shantel Swift, Evelyn Clark and Paige Patterson circled the track four times in a season-best 3:39.01 en route to second place and that performance now stands in fourth place on the school's all-time list. The foursome only finished behind Purdue (3:35.05) in the field of nine mile relay squads and it now holds a commanding five-and-a-half second lead in the Conference USA standings. It also marked the fourth consecutive top-three finish to open the season. On Friday, the quartet posted the second-fastest qualifying time (3:43.58) en route to winning the third of five preliminary heats and that only was behind the 3:39.88 clocked by Purdue.
