ENMU track team has solid showing

LUBBOCK — Eastern New Mexico University’s track squads opened the regular season in the Texas Tech Invitational on Saturday, and coach Eric Boll came away impressed with several performances.

For the men, freshman Zach Gerleve earned second place in javelin with a throw of 188 feet, 9 inches, while sophomores Ricardo Hernandez and Orlando Sanchez ran well in distance events.

Gerleve, who is from Truth or Consequenses, finished about four feet behind winner Jamie Robinson of South Plains College.

“Zach Gerleve was impressive in the javelin,” Boll said. “The kid he got beat by from South Plains has already signed with Texas Tech, and he only beat him on one throw.”

Meantime, Hernandez and Sanchez ran 4-5 in the 1,500 and were 3-5 in the 3,000.

“They both ran real well and beat several (Texas) Tech kids,” Boll said. “They’re already getting their times down near where they were at the end of last year.”

Leading performers for the women were junior Karissa Huskey in the distances, sophomore Jayme Williams in discus, junior Nicole Taute in shot put and freshman Rachel Loya in javelin.

Loya won her event at 108-3, while Taute threw a personal-best 39-1 1/4 to place third in shot.

Boll, whose team had competed in a practice meet earlier this month, said he originally wasn’t sure his athletes had done all that well in Saturday’s get-together. But after taking a closer look at the results, he changed his mind.

“It was better competition than last year because Tech had their full team (in the meet),” Boll said. “Once I looked through some of the results, I felt better about it. Overall, we had more better performances than we had people falling off.”