There’s no athletic program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley with more locally sourced talent than track & field/cross country, and that talent shines brightest on the distance running crew.
The current distance event group is almost exclusively made up of student-athletes hailing from the 956 area code, from Brownsville to Laredo. Nine of those Vaqueros are from the Rio Grande Valley and take pride in not only representing their university, but the RGV as a whole as they compete at the NCAA Division I level.
“It’s an honor being at UTRGV, especially getting to represent Brownsville. I love it,” former Brownsville Porter standout Estrella Medellin said. “Not many athletes go to the next level, so being one of them makes me very proud. My high school coaches still keep in touch. And my principal and my assistant principal ask how things are going. They all continue to support me and stay very involved, and I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Medellin, a sophomore, is heading to the Western Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships ranked 23rd in the women’s 800-meter run. She missed time this season due to a stress reaction, but she’s feeling healthy and hopeful to score for the Vaqueros in Seattle. The preliminary race is Friday, and qualifiers will run Saturday in the 800 final.
Graduate student Ricardo Mendoza, a La Joya High alumnus, and junior Edinburg North alumnus Tristan Pena will compete in the men’s 800. Mendoza, a silver medalist in the event in 2018, has been focusing solely on this outdoor season since August because his indoor and cross country eligibility was used. He’s ranked fifth in the event, sitting two seconds behind the current leader.
“I feel like it should all finish on a high note,” Mendoza said. “I want to win. I feel like this is the year when everything’s going to pay off.
“The weight room and the speed development we’ve been working on since the fall has helped. When you get to conference you think of it as a big meet, and it is important, but you should take it as just another meet. That’s the mentality I have, just go out and show what I’ve been doing in practice.”
Along with the 800, Pena will run the men’s 1,500 with freshman teammate Alex Canales, a Rio Grande City alumnus. The prelims are scheduled for today, and the final will run Saturday. Pena ranks 20th in the 800 and 19th in the 1,500. He echoed Mendoza’s sentiment that the new training process the Vaqueros are on, brought in by new distance coach Travis Pope, has been extremely beneficial.
“Coach Pope has been helping us with speed, a little more quickness coming off the line, and being able to last towards the end of the race,” Pena said. “I feel a lot stronger than I have in previous years. I’m probably in the best shape of my life, so I feel very positive for the end of this season and our upcoming season.
“I’m looking forward to competing at conference and trying to win it. I feel very confident that I can come home with a medal in the 1,500, and I’ll try my best to place in the 800.”
A trio of Valley natives will run the women’s 1,500: McAllen Rowe’s Janie Delgado and Sharyland High’s Andrea Gallardo and Ana Hernandez, all sophomores.
UTRGV’s roster is very young, so most of the distance runners will continue growing under Pope’s intensity-over-mileage philosophy.
But Mendoza, a sixth-year student-athlete completing his masters of education in educational technology, is looking ahead to sharing all he learned at UTRGV with the next generation of RGV runners.
“I’ve always wanted to be a coach in track & field. I feel there’s a lot of talent in the Valley, you just have to give them the training,” Mendoza said. “I want to teach them what I learned in college. If you can give them that in the early years, they can do great things in the future. That’s my plan, to coach here in the Valley, and hopefully in the future I can come back to UTRGV as a coach.”
