NEW YORK, N.Y. — Victor Perez led a parade of four UTSA top-three finishes with a victory in the weight throw and the Roadrunners men's track & field team wrapped up a successful two days of action at this weekend's Armory Invitational on Saturday.
Perez registered a program-record toss of 64-5 (19.63m) on his second throw of the day and that topped the field 21 athletes. The performance erased Phil Steinert's five-year-old mark of 63-9 ½ (19.44m), which came at the 2012 Texas Tech Invitational, and it moved the senior from San Antonio up to second place on this year's Conference USA leaderboard. It was an improvement of nearly two feet from his previous personal best of 62-7 ¾ (19.09m) that was recorded two weeks ago at the Texas A&M Aggies Invitational.
"Today was a good day," Perez said. "Coach (Chris) Adams and I have been making little changes to my technique and I'm glad that I was able to go out and put a new record on the board. Everyone has been working hard and the team will be ready when the conference meet comes around later this month."
Meanwhile, Patrick Prince raced to a silver medal in the 60-meter hurdles after matching Friday's career-best and league-leading time of 7.86, a mark that also ranks 18th nationally. Youngstown State's Chad Zallow cruised to the gold medal in the nine-man final in 7.61.
The Roadrunners also registered a pair of bronze medal on the final day of competition.
The 1,600m relay quartet of Byron Taylor, Desmond Jefferson, Chris Rosales and Vasha Sherriff passed the stick in 3:12.52 en route to third place in the invitational race and that now stands as the fifth-fastest performance in program history. In fact, UTSA now has recorded three of the top five mile relay times in school annals this season. Ohio State won the event in 3:11.94, while Arizona finished second in 3:12.08.
Davante Edwards also placed third in the high jump with his clearance of 6-8 ¾ (2.05m) and he now ranks third in the C-USA standings. That was just one inch shy of Duke's Colt Sessions, who captured the gold medal.
Several more solid performances came throughout the day for the Roadrunners.
Mikael Dawkins finished fourth in the 60m final with a time of 6.90. Ohio State's Deshawn Marshall won the title after crossing the finish line in 6.77.
Three UTSA sprinters — Jefferson (PR 21.77), Dawkins (21.83) and Taylor (21.89) — qualified for the 200m final, but only Dawkins ran and he finished fifth in 22.28.
Luca Chatham raced to a fifth-place finish in the 800m with a time of 1:53.32 and he finished third among collegians in the field of 51 middle distance runners.
The Roadrunners finished in a third-place tie in the team standings with Oklahoma with 46 points. Ohio State won the title with 77 points, while South Carolina was second with 60.5.
"This was a great meet for the team," Director of Track & Field/Cross Country Aaron Fox said. "We accomplished what we needed and, once again, the Armory was good to us."
UTSA will return to action next Friday, Feb. 10, at the Howie Ryan Invitational in Houston in what will be the team's final tune-up for the C-USA Indoor Championships.
