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Sports

UH splits up for weekend competitions

Cougars send runners to TSU Relays, remaining athletes to Texas Invitational 

by LOUIE VERA
The Daily Cougar

The UH track and field team will split between two competitions this weekend. The runners will compete in the TSU Relays and the throwers and field event athletes will head to Austin for the Texas Invitational.

TSU running events will be held at the Alexander Durley Sports Complex on the TSU campus today and Saturday. The Texas Invitational will start at 11 a.m. Sunday with the women's hammer throw and the men's javelin.

Among this year's participants in the Texas Invitational are host Texas, Angelo State, South Florida, Texas State, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas-Pan American and Texas-San Antonio. 

The Texas men's team tallied up 11 NCAA regional-qualifying marks and nine wins in last year's Texas Invitational and captured 11 victories in 2005.

Last week Longhorn head coach Bubba Thornton was named head coach for Team USA's men's track and field team for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. 

Thornton was also voted the 2007 United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches' Association South Central Region Indoor Coach of the Year.

UH is headed into competition this weekend coming off a solid opening outdoor performance as it earned fives wins along with five NCAA Regional qualifying times at the Tom Tellez Invitational that was hosted by the Cougars.

Freshman Hyleta Young won the long jump with a leap of 5.82m/19-01.25. A throw of 53.30m/174-10 in the discus earned junior James Lee the discus victory and freshman Alex Bentley was victorious in the pole vault along with the men's 4x400 relay team. Lee and Bentley each set NCAA Regional qualifying marks in their events along with junior Ivan Diggs and senior Tristian Whitley in the high jump.

In the 2006 outdoor season the Cougars won seven relays and seven individual events at the TSU Relays. Former thrower Jonathan Reeves and sophomore sprinter/hurdler Seun Adigun led the way by recording two individual wins. 

Senior Carey LaCour, who was an integral part of the Cougars' run to the Conference USA indoor championship in February, notched a win along with Oumama Hallal and Caresir Hamilton. It was LaCour's first collegiate career 100-meter race, and he edged teammate Perry Preston by five-tenths of a second with a run of 10.57 seconds to take the gold medal.

Hallal was the women's 5,000-meter champion with a time of 18:09.59, and Hamilton claimed the women's triple jump with a leap of 12.31 meters.

Sam Fobbs placed first in the men's 400-meter hurdles with a time of 53.79 seconds and was also a member of the distance medley relay team that won the race with a time of 9:58.18. 

The women's team brought home the gold in four relays: the 4x100-meter, 4x200-meter, 4x800-meter and the 1600-meter sprint medley relay race.

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