LONG BEACH & TORRANCE, Calif. — Adrian Riley's victory on Friday in the long jump highlighted the UTSA men's track & field team busy weekend of action at two meets on the West Coast. All told, the Roadrunners posted a total of a dozen top-10 finishes at the three-day Mt. SAC Relays while also competing at Saturday's Beach Invitational.
Riley leaped a career-best 24-4 ½ (7.43m) in topping the field of 18 long jumpers. The nine-inch improvement from his previous personal record moved him up to fifth place on this season's Conference USA leaderboard.
Meanwhile, the trio of Tyler Finke, Barrett Brock and Gabe Vargas each registered top-five place performances on Friday in their specialty events.
Finke placed fourth in the shot put with his measurement of 56-6 ½ (17.23m), while Vargas was one spot back in fifth with his put of 56-0 ½ (17.08m). Kelsey Benoit was sixth (55-4 ¾/16,88m), which gave UTSA half of the top six finishers in the event. Vargas, Benoit and Finke currently take up the top three spots in the league standings this season.
Meanwhile, Brock cleared 15-5 (4.70m) en route to fifth place in the pole vault and Vargas recorded a career-best measurement of 169-1 (51.53m) in the discus, a mark that was good for fifth in the 28-man field and that now ranks fourth in the conference rankings this season.
Derek Fenton added a throw of 168-11 (51.50m) in Friday's discus and that was good for sixth place.
On the track, Luca Chatham raced to the fifth-fastest 800 meters time in program history when he crossed the finish line in 1:50.62 and that placed him seventh in the field of 50 middle distance runners. Chatham now ranks sixth in this spring's league standings.
Ty Anderson and Vasha Sheriff both placed seventh in their respective events on Saturday.
Sheriff just missed a personal best in the 400m with his time of 46.49, which was only four one-hundredths of a second shy of the career best he clocked earlier this season.
Meanwhile, Anderson, who was the only collegian in the invitational high jump field, cleared a season-best 6-11 ¾ (2.13m) and UTSA's All-American moved up to the top of the conference leaderboard with his performance.
UTSA's other top-10 showings of the weekend came from Kaylon Sellers, who recorded a ninth-place effort in Friday's long jump (22-9/6.93m), while the 1,600m relay passed the baton in a season-best 3:09.00 on Saturday en route to ninth place and that time now stands fourth in this spring's league rankings.
The Roadrunners will be back in action next Saturday, April 22, at the J. Fred Duckett Invitational in Houston.
