Rice alum takes gold at NACAC track competition

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA – An alumnus for the Rice Raiders track team has continued to add some prestige to his post high school career after a strong outing in the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association Championship. Rice graduate Connor Schulman has had a strong career since departing the halls of Rice High School. After a strong year for the Texas A&M College Station track team, Schulman took the gold medal in the NACAC Championship meet for the 110 m hurdles.

Schulman’s collegiate stint has worked out in his favor after some quality performances in the NCAA D1 National Postseason. After making it to the West Regionals two seasons in a row, he made it to the National Championship Meet where he made history for Texas A&M with the second-best time in their history for the 110 m hurdles. Schulman took first place in his heat and second place overall to reach the Finals where he finished in seventh place. His momentum from the collegiate season carried over into his first international competition as he had some impressive performances that led to his first-place finish.

The NACAC Championship meet is an Olympic style competition that features some of the best talent from North and Central America and the islands surrounding like Costa Rica and Jamaica. Schulman represented the United States after his strong collegiate run against some of the best talent in the global region.

Schulman began his outing with an impressive run in the semifinals. He took first place in his heat to qualify for the finals, finishing with a time of 13.55 seconds and second place overall across both heats. He was just milliseconds away from beating the semifinal winner, Craig Thorne from Canada, who was the first-place winner in the other heat group.

In the Finals, Schulmann kicked it to another gear as he dropped 15 milliseconds from his time in the semifinals to take the gold medal at the competition. His time of 13.40 was also 17 milliseconds faster than the next highest placing runner.

The United States had a dominating effort throughout the rest of the competition. They had the second-largest team present with 61 runners with girls and boys in the 18U and 23U divisions. Schulman’s division, the 23U boys, contributed greatly to their performance in the meet as they added nine gold medals, eight silver medals and six bronze medals for a total of 23 points. Despite not having an 18U team, the boys and the girls still finished in first place with the 18U and 23U combined score. The US finished with a score of 47 with both genders and divisions combined after finishing with 23 total gold medals, 16 total silver medals and eight bronze medals. They had 15 more medals than the next highest- scoring team.