By Megan Sanders and Ella Torres, March 24, 2026
The Cal Poly Pomona men’s and women’s track and field teams rounded off the Ben Brown Invitational, March 12-13 with several athletes earning personal bests.
CPP graduate student Ricardo Vargas led the charge on the men’s side finishing third overall with a personal record of 14:18.79 in the 5,000-meter race, earning him a top 10 mark in program history. Senior Jimmy Guerrero followed, securing fifth place for CPP with a time of 14:27.77.
According to Vargas, despite running a personal best, this race wasn’t perfect, and he looks forward to learning from his mistakes and continuing to improve more as the season progresses.
“Once I saw that the leaders were slowing down a little bit, and we were speeding up, I realized, ‘OK, this is the moment where we can pretty much take over the race,’” Vargas said, explaining his strategy during the critical moments of the race.
Senior Cory Gamero notably placed the top five after throwing 48.02 meters in discus.
The men’s side had two middle-distance runners break four minutes in the 1,500 meter. CPP freshman Trajan Cephas finished in eighth place with a time of 3:58.04 followed closely by CPP sophomore Thomas Doherty who finished in 3:58.39 and finished in ninth place.
On the women’s side, graduate student Arissa Hatcher, continued her hot streak this season, coming in fifth place in the 800 meters with a time of 2:12.58. Hatcher, who broke four school records last season, already broke two more during the indoor season.
Leading the way in the women’s 100 meters was CPP senior Jessica James, who ran a personal best of 12.01 earning her a 12th place finish. James was also recently named the CCAA athlete of the week for March 3-8.
Freshman Naomi Shillingford also put up an impressive display for the Broncos in both the 100 meter and 200 meter. Shillingford finished in the top 20 in both events, 12.17 in the 100 meter and 24.99 in the 200 meter.
According Shillingford, she is gaining confidence as the season progresses and is happy with where she’s at right now in training, especially since her indoor season didn’t live up to what she had hoped.
“In my head I was like, ‘I knew I had to PR,’ so I just ran really hard, and once I got off the bend I was like, ‘OK, I’m in the lead,” Shillingford said.
This meet was a season opener for a lot of the Broncos, especially those who raced the 5,000 meter on the distance side. It was also a track heavy squad with no Broncos competing in the long jump, pole-vault and high jump because assistant coach Ian Jennings was with Neshara Smith at the indoor nationals meet where she earned two All-American titles and placed fifth in the 60 meters and ninth in long jump.
According to head coach Chris Bradford, this partial squad meet was a good chance to get athletes focusing on one event for the most part, and he hopes to see the team make improvements as time goes on.
“We’re not quite where we want to be yet, but it’s also mid-March, so that’s OK,” Bradford said. “It was a really solid opener for a lot of people.”
Bradford added the split-squad theme will continue at the UC Riverside Spring Break Classic March 21, which is the next meet for the Broncos, but this time the field events should have a larger showing with some runners resting.
The next race after the Spring Break Classic for the Broncos is the Mangrum Invitational March 27.
Feature image courtesy of the CPP Athletics
