KINGSVILLE, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi track & field team wrapped up competition at the 2026 Cactus Cup, hosted by Texas A&M-Kingsville, on Saturday, ranking near the top of the leaderboard in many different events and logging many different top 10 all-time performances across the two days.
The Islanders kicked things off on Friday in a few different field events, the most notable of which being both the men's and women's hammer throw. In the former, the team had each of the top two finishers, with
Emmanuel Ekuma finishing in first place with a throw of 56.32m and
Samson Black coming in right behind in second place at 53.41m. A similar script played out for the women as well, as
Cyan Green took home the win herself after reaching 55.72m and
Breyunna Dowell securing the silver in her big return from injury with a mark of 53.57m. Also in this event, both
Natalia Rankin-Chitar and
Abby Moilan either made their way onto the school's top 10 or improved their spot on it, ranking seventh and ninth respectively with marks of 41.43m and 40.01m.
The team then returned for a fuller slate on Saturday, starting out hot on the track in one of the first events of the day, the 4x100m relay. A&M-Corpus Christi sent the unit of
Colin Benton,
Kenya Ford,
Luke Bartnick and
Dallas Freudenburg to the blocks, and they proceeded to take home a second-place finish overall, crossing the line on the final leg with a time of 41.51 seconds. This mark was good enough for fourth all-time in program history, just under a second behind the record of 40.97 seconds set back in 2019.
As it turned out, this would be just the first standout race of the day for Benton specifically, as he kept his very strong day going later on with another nice effort in the 100m. The freshman won his heat and finished in eighth place overall out of 34 competitors, doing so after clocking in a blazing-fast time of 10.66 seconds. This debuted Benton at No. 6 in that top 10 in school history, doing so for the second straight week after he reached a tie for second in the 200m at last week's Bobcat Invitational in San Marcos.
On the other side of the roster, the Islanders continued to impress on the field, starting at the men's discus when Ekuma, Black and
Riley Wampler swept the podium and
Ty Domel finished sixth with a mark of 44.72m that now ranks him eighth in program history. Ekuma and Black then completed the trifecta in the shot put, finishing first and second once again with throws of 17.38m and 15.47m respectively.
The podium finished did not stop with the men, either, as the women also continued to run it in their remaining throwing events as well. First in the discus, both Green and
Tania Amos got up there in second and third, doing so by reaching marks of 48.32m and 43.34m. Finally, Rankin-Chitar emerged victorious in the shot put, winning by more than half a meter over the second-place finisher with a throw of 15.39m.
Not to be overshadowed, the jumps group also got a strong performance themselves, which came from
Alicia Long in the women's high jump. After succeeding on each of her first three jumps of the day, Long came up for her attempt at 1.68m and cleared that one on her first try as well, making her just one of three athletes in the field to reach that mark. This was Long's best effort as an Islander during outdoor season so far, and it got her up to fifth in program history.
"It was a really solid weekend across the board," Islanders head coach
Bryan Jackson said. The men's sprint group has really started to come into their own this outdoor season, and I am excited to continue to watch them develop. The throws group also had some really bright spots, with Cyan, Natalia and Emmanuel in the shot put really standing out to me."
The Islanders will now prepare for their only out-of-state trip of the regular season next week, traveling west to California for both the Bryan Clay Invitational at Azusa Pacific University and the Mt. SAC Relays next Thursday through Saturday.
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