Tacoma, WA - The Trojans opened up the 2023 track and field season under first year head coach Lance Giles at the Peyton-Shotwell Invitational hosted by the University of Puget Sound. The squad is young with only two competing sophomores on the women's side, and just one on the men's side. But the youth showed out well in their first ever collegiate track and field meet, culminating with a win by freshman Khalil Gilbert in the men's 400m race.
Two freshman led the women's team, 9th place finishes by Jayda Pittman in the 100m & 200m, and a 3rd place finish by Emma Arceo in the 400m. Arceo finished first among the CC competitors from Olympic and Green River with a time of 1:04.85 (ranked 7th in the NWAC). Pittman finished 2nd in the 100m and 200m among NWAC competition, less than half a second behind Green River's Alexa Callanan in both races. Other freshman, Siari Rodriguez finished 8th in the 400m, earning a team point and Sierra Flores finished 5th in the shot put and 7th in the discus securing 6 more points. Sophomore Iayanah Brewer finished 10th in the 100m and 14th in the 200m, neither quite reaching her PR's, but she led the 4x100 relay team to a second place finish, by less than a second and their early season time of 52.88 ranks 5th in the NWAC. As a team the women scored 21 points and finished 7th overall out of 12 teams.
The men competed all freshman this weekend, and finished 6th overall out of 10 collegiate teams. Freshman Miguel Hurtado finished 4th in the 100m with a time of 11.45 (five one-hundredths of a second behind Green Rivers Donald Barnes), and also finished 10th in the 200m. His time of 11.45 currently ranks 11th in the NWAC, fractions of a second outside of the top 8. Kaden Chidester finished 11th in the 400m with a time of 55.39 (just outside of the NWAC top 16), and took first in the triple jump at 38'4", beating out a competitor from Pacific Lutheran University. Kaden's triple jump mark currently ranks 5th in the NWAC. The big performance of the day came from Khalil Gilbert who took 2nd overall in the 200m (first among collegiate competitors) with a time of 22.70 ranking him 3rd in the NWAC, and first in the 400m with a time of 50:15, which meets the NWAC Championship auto qualifier and puts him ranked 2nd in the NWAC by less than a tenth of a second.
Sophomore Jamira Barnes (the teams lone multi event athlete) will compete at the Pacific University Multi Event meet this Thursday, March 30th. The rest of the team will join Jamira in Forrest Grove, OR for the Pacific Open meet on Saturday.