The Incarnate Word Men's Track and Field team closed the gap on leaders Stephen F. Austin on Day 2 of the Southland Conference Outdoor Championships, moving into second place with 63 team points. The Cardinals trail the Lumberjacks by one point heading into the final day of the championship.

Incarnate Word got the day's track events started with four runners qualifying for finals on Saturday. Devin Gills had the fourth-fastest time in the 100 meters prelims to move onto the finals. Jared Laverty, Ethan Malesich, and Anthony Zapata all qualified for the 800 meters finals. Zapata won his heat with a time of 1:51.15 and Laverty and Malesich both qualified with times of 1:50.61 and 1:50.83, respectively.

Tajh Jones and Tommaso Franze were scorers in the long jump for the Cardinals. Jones finished sixth with a distance of 7.18 meters and Franze was right behind him in seventh with a mark of 7.09 meters.
Incarnate Word had extremely strong showings in both the decathlon and the 3,000-meter steeple as the Cardinals had two medalists in each event and nine total scorers across the two events.

In the decathlon, Mika Funck moved up from third to take the silver, finishing with 7,363 points, Franze jumped up two spots to earn the bronze with 7,263 points, Gabriel Grebet, who was in second after the first five events, settled for fourth with 7,226 points, and Nicolai Nelson finished sixth with 6,969.

Funck finished no worse than fourth in Saturday's five events, starting with a third-place finish in the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 15.03 seconds. He then placed third in discus and pole vault, throwing 39.63 meters and clearing 4.60 meters, second in javelin with a throw of 57.46 meters, and fourth in the 1,500-meter run to close out the decathlon with a time of 4:40.66.

Franze was fairly consistent on Saturday with a fourth-place finish in javelin, a pair of fifth-place finishes, in 110-meter hurdles and 1,500-meter run, and a seventh-place finish in discus. But his top performance was also the one that gained him the most points on the field as he won the pole vault as the only decathlete to clear both the 4.90-meter and 5.00-meter bars.

Grebet overtook first place in the overall decathlon standings after winning the 110-meter hurdles, posting a time of 14.47 seconds and beating the second-place finisher by 0.40 seconds. But he gave up ground over the remaining events to finish fourth overall. He placed fourth in discus with a distance of 38.66 meters, sixth in pole vault, clearing up to 4.20 meters, seventh in javelin with his best throw traveling 46.24 meters, and eighth in the 1,500 meters, posting a time of 4:53.59.

Nelson bolstered his position in the throwing events, winning discus with a top throw of 47.87 meters and placing third in javelin at 57.09 meters. Those points added to sixth, eighth, and 10th-place finishes in the 110-meter hurdles, pole vault, and 1,500 meters, respectively, to give him a sixth-place finish.

The last event of the night was the 3,000-meter steeple, where five of the top seven finishers were wearing the UIW on their chests. James Butler claimed the silver medal with a time of 9:07.82 and Malesich took the bronze, finishing closely behind his teammate, in 9:08.03. Kamron Loera, Jared Laverty, and Eric Pineda then finished fifth, sixth, and seventh, and within two minutes of each other, to add to the Cardinals' point total. Loera ran it in 9:16.14, Laverty in 9:17.01, and Pineda posted a time of 9:18.20.

The Southland Conference Outdoor Championship closes on Saturday with incarnate Word looking to overtake Stephen F. Austin and claim their fourth SLC Championship in the last five years.