By ANDREW CRUM, Staff Writer
PORT ISABEL — For the sixth consecutive year, Port Isabel plays host to the Tarpon Relays.
Port Isabel has a wide range of track & field talent from around the Rio Grande Valley scheduled to compete today at Tarpon Stadium. The field events begin at 9 a.m. while the 3,200-meter run is slated to start at 9:30 a.m. with the girls slated to run first followed by the boys. The rest of the running events will begin at 1 p.m. again with the girls followed by the boys.
Port Isabel is expecting at least 18 schools to compete, including teams from Brownsville, Harlingen High, Harlingen South, Weslaco High, La Feria, Progreso, Rio Hondo, Edcouch-Elsa and Raymondville.
“Which is great because I want our kids to compete with the best and that’s the only way we can get there,” first-year Port Isabel boys coach Joe Gonzalez said. “It’s a pretty good mixture of good competition.”
Last year, Los Fresnos edged Port Isabel for the girls title, and Harlingen South won the boys title just ahead of Porter.
“I’m really excited about the group of girls we have coming back this year,” Port Isabel girls coach Julie Breedlove said. “We only lost three seniors, so we’re still a young team. I’m excited to see what we can do.”
Gonzalez, who took over for Ryan Stanage after he left for another job at Mt. Pleasant, is excited to continue to build the program.
“Coach Stanage left a good foundation here in track,” Gonzalez said. “I’m just building on the foundation that he left and the kids have responded. In order to have a great track team, you have to have a good coaching staff and I have some that are outstanding and the kids believe in them. It makes my job easy.”
The Port Isabel boys, who took third at the recent Donna meet, hope to continue to improve on their times this week. With a wide range of classes competing, Gonzalez hopes it will help his team prepare for district.
“I expect our kids to be competitive,” he said. “It will be a big plus for us to run at home. It’s an adrenaline rush. We’re competing with big schools so we can compare our times. Our goal is to win district, so hopefully this will help us to get better.”
As for the Lady Tarpons, they look to have their complete team intact for the first time this season. But their goal is also to see how they match up with the district competition that will be present this weekend.
“It will be a good indication of where everybody is in the district,” Breedlove said. “We want to get better every week … shave a few seconds off every week, jump a couple inches higher, a couple of inches further.”
Andrew Crum covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6629 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter, he’s @andrewmcrum.