ABILENE, Texas -- The TLU relay squads once again rewrote the SCAC record books as the Texas Lutheran men's track and field team wrapped the 2026 SCAC Championships on Sunday.

The Bulldogs were able to successfully defend their 4x400m relay championship and won the 4x100m relay for the third time in the last four championship meets - both in record breaking fashion. The 4x100m relay team comprised of Rickey Franks (Rockport/Rockport-Fulton), Eden Perez (Hebbronville/Hebbronville), Tavion Parrish (Kyle/Johnson), and Hezekiah McDow (Goliad/Weiss), who entered the weekend ranked fourth in the nation in the event, won the event with a time of 40.80 seconds, matching the meet record set by McMurry (40.8) just last year. The 4x400m relay team comprised of Perez, Braylen Brown (San Antonio/Randolph), Gavino Ramirez (Alice/Alice), and Caden Keller (McAllen/McAllen) successfully defended their 4x400m relay championship in record breaking fashion, clocking in at 3:13.77 to move into 14th in NCAA Division-III and besting their time of 3:14.68 from their respective freshman campaign last season.

The trio of Brown, Ramirez, and Keller combined to sweep the podium in the 400m dash with Brown repeating as SCAC champion in the event with a time of 47.35 seconds, climbing to 15th in Division-III in the process.

As a team, Texas Lutheran finished second with 145 points, an improvement from last year's fifth place finish with 87.5 points.

The men's title came down to the final event of the evening with the Bulldogs leading a majority of Sunday's festivities until a late surge from McMurry saw the War Hawks overcome the deficit. Two podium finishes from the War Hawks in the pole vault in addition to podium finishes in the final sprint events proved to be the difference as the War Hawks outlasted the Bulldogs by a mere seven points.

Rickey Franks finished third in the 400m hurdles with a time of 56.07 seconds.

Garrett Haass (La Vernia/La Vernia) narrowly missed returning to the podium in the 110m hurdles, finishing fourth with a time of 14.87 seconds. Hezekiah McDow finished fourth in the 100m dash with a time 10.65 seconds and added a fourth place finish in the 200m dash, clocking in 21.32 seconds, moving into the top 25 nationally in the event.

Full Results: https://tlubulldogs.com/documents/2026/4/26/scac_full_meet_results_fri-sat-sun.pdf

The Bulldogs will compete intermittently over the course of the next month as they prepare for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Veteran's Memorial Field Sports Complex in La Crosse, Wisconsin, May 21-23, starting with the Trinity Last Chance meet on Sunday, May 10. 

For all updates on Texas Lutheran Track and Field, follow @tluthrows and @tluxctf on Instagram as well as all official TLU Athletics accounts. All schedule updates can be found on tlubulldogs.com.