Lopes stack up with country's best

Thursday, March 30

Austin, Texas

Grand Canyon

Texas Relays

Christie-Galloway at Willie Williams Classic

4/1/2023 8:17:00 PM | Track and Field

Christie-Galloway, Rodriguez break GCU records at Texas Relays

By: Nathan Peters

AUSTIN, Texas – The Grand Canyon track and field team concluded the weekend against some of the best in the nation with impressive results.

"We had a good weekend in Texas," GCU head coach Tom Flood said. "Competing in both the Texas Relays in Austin and at Texas State in San Marcos can make for some difficult commuting between the meets. Our athletes handled all the travel and the warming up again at another meet, very well."

At Texas State's Bobcat Invitational, Lopes thrower Oscar Rodriguez had himself a day.

"Rodriguez, who obviously enjoyed being back home in Texas, got us started at Texas State with a WAC-leading and school-record bomb discus throw of 56.36 meters," Flood said.

Once again, GCU's Keira Christie-Galloway upgraded the school record books. In her two days at the Texas Relays, Christie-Galloway rocked her 100-meter hurdles preliminary run in 13.08 seconds and qualified for the finals, which would have shattered the school record if it wasn't wind-aided. She finished sixth in the final with a wind legal race of 13.23.

"The 4x400-meter men's relay just missed our school record by 0.49 seconds with their 3:09.16 at the Texas Relays," Flood said.

The relay included Mariano Hernandez, Ben Stratman, Bryson Benjamin and Erin Brown.

"We also had three different event groups achieve two all-time top-10 GCU performances at the Texas State meet." Flood said. "In the men's 200 meters, both Adam Knuff (21.06) and Mariano Hernandez (21.18 from lane 1) had top-10 times.

"Jarron Stevens and Alex Rafferty both moved further up the GCU top ten in the 800 meters."

Stevens had a time of 1:51.76, which is a freshman record while Rafferty had a time of 1:52.08.

"Both Brooke Weimer and Mia Corners achieved top-10 marks in the long jump," Flood said.

Weimer had a distance of 5.99 meters and Corner jumped 5.89 meters.

"At the Texas Relays, Atena Rayson had a GCU top-10 time in the 100 meters, clocking in at 11.83 and Dawnielle Lewis ran 11.81 at Texas State at the same distance," Flood said.

Next week, some of the Lopes will head back to Tucson.

"Our multi-event athletes will compete next mid-week at the UofA Jim Click event," Flood said. "The majority of our team will take next Easter Weekend off and look to continue to improve at the Mt. SAC Relays the following weekend."