Just before sunrise on a recent Monday morning students began gathering at Texas A&M University-San Antonio’s brand new track field. This was only their third week training together and would work on mobility, stretches, and quick sprints to warm up for a 45-minute run.
These student athletes are part of the university’s first cross-country and track and field teams. Both sports debuted this fall under the careful watch of Head Coach Blair Sohl, who joined TAMUSA on April 6 and hit the ground running recruiting students the minute his hiring became official.
“I feel very strongly about being able to build a program from the ground up,” Sohl said. “I mean, that doesn’t come around every day… It’s a blessing for a coach to be able to put a stamp on something so special.”
Many of the athletes who answered Sohl’s call, said this was the opportunity to join a college team, but also leave a mark on San Antonio’s South Side.
“I was super excited,” said Madison Regalado, 20, a junior student athlete studying psychology, who joined both the track and field and cross-country teams.
“I’m from [San Antonio] and so just being able to be a part and be given the opportunity to grow a program, especially with it being on the South Side.”
The Jaguars now compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, or NAIA, in men’s golf, men’s and women’s basketball, softball, track and field and cross country.
Through NAIA, TAMUSA is now part of a 250 member organization that represents smaller institutions, including Our Lady of the Lake University, Texas A&M University-Victoria and Texas A&M University-Texarkana.
Regalado was one of 85 student athletes who joined cross country and track and field teams this fall. Some, but not all, of these students compete in both sports.
“We were off and running,” said TAMUSA’s founding Athletics Director Darnell Smith. He began building its athletics department since 2020, when he joined the university.
In the spring of 2021, the first two sports programs launched — softball and men’s golf — with about 30 student athletes and coaches Nicole Dame leading softball and Christi Cano at the helm of golf.
In the fall of 2021, men’s and women’s soccer launched, led by coaches Robert Jaramillo and Tim Moody. This more than doubled the number of student athletes at the university with at least 85 students participating in soccer.
By the fall of 2024, the university had added men and women’s basketball, led by coaches David Smith and Chris Minner, growing to more than 130 student athletes.
This latest addition brings the total number of athletes to about 220. About 10% to 12% of athletes in these two new sports were existing TAMUSA students and also athletes in other sports, Smith said.
“That’s the beautiful thing about track and field and cross country, that if you can make it work, if you can run, there could be an opportunity,” Smith said.
Starting from scratch
Hiring coaches was an immediate need for the young university as the athletics programs developed, Smith said.
Some sports were easier to launch than others, especially those that didn’t require new facilities on campus, such as golf. Most other sports required planning for new facilities on campus, and using outside facilities in the meantime.
“Truly it’s a collaborative and team effort,” Smith said. “When we think about adding sports, it is about what makes the most sense for our institution within the region.”
Since 2020, when Smith came onboard, the university has added four athletic facilities: a soccer field, softball field, a recreation center with a full-size gym and competition-level basketball courts, and the track and field complex with a multipurpose field.
With the TAMUSA campus sitting on 700 acres of land, Smith said there is no shortage of space. But the 17-year-old university, which serves about 8,000 students, has many needs that require new facilities including academic buildings, student housing and recreational space.
“We’re growing by leaps and bounds in all different phases,” Smith said. “In terms of logistics… We have to be mindful of other entities.”
They also have to be able to afford new facilities, Smith said, and these have to get the stamp of approval not only from their local leadership, including TAMUSA President Salvador Hector Ochoa, but the Texas A&M University Board of Regents.
This latest addition, the track and field space, became possible through a $10 million investment from Bexar County, which also included a renovation of the softball field. Part of the agreement is for these spaces to be open to be accessible to the community including for local track meets, or just for recreational use.
“This expansion reflects the university’s pioneering spirit and our commitment to creating new opportunities to engage with the community, recruit students from across the state, and attract new supporters and partners,” Ochoa said in a statement.
Building a team
Sohl was the former assistant coach at the University of the Incarnate Word for track and field and cross country. When he arrived at TAMUSA, he immediately contacted area coaches, attended meets all across the city, and reached out to students who had not picked a team by the spring.
Pitching to be part of a brand new program was exciting to some students who saw it as a rare and exciting opportunity, Sohl said. Those were the students he was looking for, but he also knew it could be seen as a risk by students who wanted something more established.
“You’re never going to be it for everybody,” Sohl said, adding he was seeking students who, as he put it, “had that the twinkle in their eye” and saw the potential in setting the foundation for the program.
It was through this network of coaches, track meets and even transfer portals that Sohl was able to quickly build a team who were expected to literally hit the ground running. This week they’ll be participating in the the Sam Musgrave UIW Twilight, a cross-country event, and competitions will quickly amount from there.
Naturally, a lot of the new student athletes are from San Antonio and the surrounding area, Sohl said, some recent graduates from area high schools.
“But then there’s a fair amount of kids that are from San Antonio that finished their associate degree and love the idea of coming back to San Antonio and building something,” Sohl said.
That’s the case of Regalado. She started running in both sports when she was at Sotomayor High School, in Northside Independent School District.
Once she graduated in 2024, she transferred to Western Texas College, a two-year college in Snyder, Texas. There, she continued competing in the sports until this year, when she earned an associate’s degree and was looking to transfer to a four year university to pursue a degree in psychology and continue growing as an athlete.
She heard from several of her coaches, including her former high school coach, about the opportunity to be part of the inaugural team at TAMUSA. For Regalado, who missed her home of San Antonio, this made total sense.
“Just last week the whole track and cross country team volunteered at the Southwest High School [track] meet. So we got to show the kids that live on that side of town what we’re bringing into the community as well and how we’re helping out the community,” Regalado said.
Growing together
Bethany Iniguez also joined the team over the summer. The 18-year-old has been part of track and cross country since her sophomore year, and this summer she graduated from Southside High School — located about 10 miles south of TAMUSA.
Iniguez visited TAMUSA while in high school and loved the campus, but it wasn’t until the end of her senior year that she heard they were finally adding her sports. So she drafted an introductory email for Sohl in which included her latest running times, nervous that she wouldn’t meet college requirements.
“In my senior year I ran better than in previous years because I was more responsible about it, more consistent,” Iniguez said in Spanish. This is what she intends to replicate in college, she added.
Over the summer, she ran 47 miles per week and went from running a mile in 5 minutes and 43 seconds at the start of her training, to running it at 5 minutes and 29 seconds.
“We had a call and I asked [Sohl] if there was a time requirement to join the team, and he said no, because it’s such a new team,” Iniguez said.
Development of student athletes is one of Sohl’s main focuses. Today that is a scarce opportunity for many college athletes seeking to still grow in their skill, he said, especially if they enter NCAA division 1 and 2, where students are expected to arrive at a higher level of experience.
“There’s a lot of talent here and it might have to be developed a little bit, which is good, I find it, as that helps me keep them here,” Sohl said.
Even students who do really well in high school and join an upper division, such as Division I or II, might have more growth potential, he said.
That is the case of Taylor Warrick, who set two goals before graduating high school: Winning the University Interscholastic League state competition with his Stockdale High School team and becoming a D1 athlete.
In 2024, his senior year of high school, Warrick achieved the first of these goals after winning a 1,600 meter race in a way that has attracted a million views online.
The race was looking good for the first three laps, he recalls, he was shoulder-to-shoulder tied for first place at one point, then the unthinkable happened.
“Right before we have 100 meters to go, I fall all the way back, from sitting tied for first place, all the way to fifth,” Warrick recalls. “Then the final 100 meters hit. Mind you, I have like a 20-30 meter gap. And something clicks and I just sprint all the way past the leaders and win the race.”
From there he joined East Texas A&M University, a D1 university, joining their track and cross-country teams. But there, he wasn’t as focused, not as dedicated to either academics or athletics, and his performance declined.
“I was also transitioning from a fairly small high school to a 4-year university,” Warrick said. “So I definitely think the transition and me having such a big head at the time, were not really good combinations.”
After the university changed coaches, he also wasn’t doing well under the new coach, he said. So after his second year in college, he decided to transfer to a new university as an athlete. That’s when he connected with Coach Sohl.
“I heard that Texas A&M San Antonio was putting together a team,” Warrick said. “When I met Coach Sohl, he was like such a genuinely just nice person and you can see on his face that he wanted me to be here.”
Warrick, now a zoology major at TAMUSA, is eager to pass along some of what he has learned along the way. He can already see the team bonding, he said, getting together after practice and starting to trust each other.
With competition kicking off immediately, the students said there’s a healthy amount of nerves, but also a special kind of excitement in knowing they are building something new together.
“I feel like we are going to leave a legacy,” Iniguez said. “I wanted to be part of something like this… the first generation of runners at the university.”
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
