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The North Texas track team will be well represented when the U.S. championships get underway today in Des Moines, Iowa. Long-distance specialist Silvester Harrison, 1,500 meters entrant Bryce McAndrew and hurdler Steven White will represent the Mean Green at the national meet today through Sunday. White qualified for nationals after taking third in the 400-meter hurdles in a school-record 49.32 at the NCAA national meet this month in Eugene, Ore. White, who earned All-America honors with that showing, posted the highest finish for a member of the Mean Green since 1970. White will run in the first round of the 400 hurdles at 4:10 p.m. today, with the top 16 finishers advancing to Fridays semifinal round at 7:04 p.m. Read more:http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/north-texas-headlines/20130620-track-and-field-three-to-represent-unt-at-u.s.-championships.ece

DESOTOBoth Bishop Dunne athletes thanked their track coaches, Isaac Bell and Dewey Wakefield, along with their teachers, parents, classmates and administrators in heart-felt speeches replete with tears. Heard will be running Track for the University of North Texas, the second star from the Bishop Dunne Track team to attend UNT on a scholarship in the past three years. Austin Yeager of the class of 2011 is also a runner for UNT. Heard could break the high school TAPPS state record this weekend in three races: the 4x400 with three of his teammates, the 100 meter race and his best race, the 200 meter, where he is poised to break both a school and state TAPPS record. The current TAPPS State record is 21.8. Heard has already beaten that time in earlier meets this season. Read more: http://focusdailynews.com/bishop-dunne-track-standouts-sign-letters-of-intent-p9940-1.htm

visit to Florida earlier this month wasn’t just a trip to the beach for Deja McKnight. Well, that was part of the experience, but McKnight and her University of North Texas women’s track and field teammates definitely earned a little fun in Miramar, Fla. North Texas won the Sun Belt Conference Championships women’s team title for the second consecutive year May 12 at Florida International’s Ansin Sports Complex. A 2011 Odessa High School graduate, McKnight finished her sophomore season for the Mean Green by finishing second in the women’s shot put. It was McKnight’s top individual conference finish, and the fourth time in as many tries she has scored at championship meets — Indoor and Outdoor — for North Texas. “That was exciting,” McKnight said of the performance in Florida. “Everybody wants a ring. It’s the meet we all focus on so we can get a ring.” The North Texas women accomplished that last season for the first time since 2003 when McKnight was a freshman. She scored two points with a seventh-place finish in shot put, aiding the team’s four-point victory margin. This season’s spread was a more comfortable 20.5 points, but McKnight’s eight points earned again were vital and she is in the center of North Texas’ celebration photos with the team trophy on meangreensports.com. That is no mistake, according to North Texas throws coach Pete Abbey. Read more: http://www.oaoa.com/sports/local/article_35c1f1a8-c1c3-11e2-afa8-0019bb30f31a.html

Shahaf Bareni was walking through North Texas’ campus on a nondescript Wednesday afternoon last year when panic set in. Bareni grew up in Israel and served in the military for two years, just like all the other girls in the country were required to do as teenagers. There were plenty of times she had to run for cover when the warning sirens went off in a part of the world where military conflict has raged for years, including once when rockets hit close to her home in Golan Heights, a plateau that sits in a disputed area between Israel and southwest Syria. It wasn’t until her first Wednesday afternoon in Denton that one of UNT’s top field event specialists found out they have sirens around the campus at UNT, too. They just are used for a totally different purpose — warning people of severe weather, which wasn’t the case that day. “When I was in Israel, that siren meant something totally different,” Bareni said. “In 2005, during the second Lebanon war, rockets fell really close to my house. We had to stay at home all day and sometimes go to the shelters.” These days life is a little less hectic for Bareni, a sophomore who enters the NCAA West Regional today in Austin ranked second in her flight of the high jump with a qualifying mark of 1.81 meters (5 feet 11 1/4 inches). Bareni will advance to the national meet in Des Moines, Iowa, if she can finish in the top 24. Read more: http://www.gomeangreen.com/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=post&section=post&do=new_post&f=3