Making the Splash

TXST TRACK AND FIELD

Bobcats make program history by capturing both the Men’s and Women’s outdoor conference titles

When the Texas State Women’s Track team celebrated their 2024 outdoor conference championship by jumping into the San Marcos River, there was a glaring omission. The Men’s team finished in second place.

Fast forward to a year later, the women’s team once again celebrated winning another outdoor conference championship. However, the celebration was made more special as the women’s and men’s team jumped into the river, and the men’s team were celebrating their first conference title since 2019.

“It’s just been something very exciting to experience this with both genders,” Head Coach John Frazier said. “Whereas when we did it with the women, the men kind of felt left out, [but] they were supportive. Now that we can all partake in [the river jump] and enjoy as a full team of men and women, it was really a great feeling and a great day yesterday.”

Texas State made program history by capturing both the Men’s and Women’s Outdoor conference titles in the same season along with several track athletes making the podium over last weekend.

Frazier was proud of both the athletes and the coaching staff for all their dedication and effort to help both teams clinch the significant accomplishment.

“It’s very exciting because it shows all the hard work and planning that we’ve all put in with the staff, the athletes and seeing it all come together,” Frazier said. “We’re very excited about having accomplished that.”

Coming into the 2025 Outdoor Conference Meet, the Women’s team had won both the 2024 Outdoor conference championship and the 2025 Indoor conference championship.

Despite the pressure, Frazier felt confident in the team to not only repeat but also comeback to win the program’s third straight outdoor title.

“It’s really cool because we only lose two female athletes off this team and then not to account for the other good [athletes] we have joining our team,” Frazier said. “We feel very confident, knowing that we got to keep people healthy, eligible and all of that.

So we have predominantly our whole team coming back again. This year, a good bulk of them were freshmen and sophomores, [so] we’re pretty optimistic going into the next year for our women.”

Four Bobcat athletes took home gold medals for the women’s team with sophomore Lara Roberts taking first place in the hammer throw, freshman Charlize Goody taking first place in the javelin, junior Melanie Duron taking first place in the shot put and Abigail Parra taking first place in the 1,500-meter run.

For the Men’s team, Frazier and his staff focused on recruiting, bringing in several transfers to help the team compete for the conference title to help supplement their current roster.

“We focused on recruiting and knowing we had a good crew coming back,” Frazier said. “The addition of Kason [O’Riley] in the High Jump was huge, and the great thing was Kason pushed Aiden [Hayes] and Aiden pushed Kason. Getting Edward Ta’amilo [was huge], who scored in three events for us in the shot, discus and hammer. Even though Henry Buckles didn’t score, he won the conference indoors. He had a bad [outdoor] conference meet, but I think just his presence alone was good.

“He learned from it, and I think he’s going to come back even better for the regional meet. We had a lot of people step up.”

Four Bobcat athletes took gold medals with sophomore Easton Hammond winning the Decathlon, junior Chris Preddie winning the long jump, senior Drew Donley winning the 200-M dash and junior Aiden Hayes winning the High Jump.

Hayes, along with senior Kason O’Riley, tied the Sun Belt Conference record in the high jump with a jump of 7-4.25.

Following the conference meet, the Bobcats are now focused on getting as many athletes to the regional meet as possible while also making sure the athletes who have qualified are prepared.

“We’re not waiting three weeks before regionals so the bottom line is just fine tuning everything and gaining the proper rest,” Frazier said. “There’s no excuse for school or studying.

Some people might be in summer school, but they’re able to do stuff on-line. The bottom line is just being more sharp than what you do and paying a really close attention to detail, so there’s no issues or problems.”

The Bobcats will compete at the Texas State Twilight Meet Saturday. cmcwilliams @sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc