Mansfield Timberview’s Brandon Gilmore (right) and Tyler Madison (left) make the first exchange in the boys’ 4×100 meter relay during the UIL 5A state track and field championships at the University of Texas’ Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, TX, on Saturday, May 3, 2025. Timberview took second place with a time of 39.98.
Brendan Maloney/Special Contributor
ARLINGTON — Don’t mistake it for bravado or arrogance.
When members of the Mansfield Timberview boys 4×100-meter relay team talk about their lofty goal for Friday’s Class 5A state track meet in Austin, they’re just being realistic.
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“What we’re capable of at state is 39,” third leg Cliff Nguyen said. “We want the state record, we want the meet record, we want everything.”
Timberview ranks fourth in the nation in the 4×100 relay with the time of 40.04 that it ran at regionals two weeks ago. This eclectic group of sprinters wants more.
“We can go faster,” first leg Trysten Shaw said. “We can go 39 low or 39 mid.”
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Only two Dallas-area schools have ever broken 40 seconds in the 4×100 relay. The first was Duncanville, which ran 39.47, 39.65 and 39.73 in 2024 and 39.98 in 2022. Timberview ran 39.98 at the state meet last year, only to finish second.
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That’s because Alvin Iowa Colony won the 5A state title in 39.74, a new state-meet record for the UIL’s second-largest classification. Only four schools in national history have run faster, including national record holder Humble Atascocita, which ran 38.92 during its legendary 2024 season and then set the overall state-meet record that year by winning the 6A state title in 39.14.
Kobe Smith, who runs second leg for Timberview, said he thinks the 4×100 relay team would have run faster at state in 2025 if he hadn’t been injured. He partially tore his groin at regionals but still competed as the anchor leg to help Timberview run the eighth-best time in the country last year.
“I feel like we could have run way faster, and this year we get another chance to, so I’m excited,” he said. “The goal for me is to run 39.”
Another Timberview runner has done the same as Smith this year. Anchor leg Brandon Gilmore Jr. has battled a hamstring injury that has had him in and out of the 4×100 lineup and forced him to take time off from practice.
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“I’m just thankful to be able to fight through that and compete at state,” he said. “I feel as close as I’m going to get to 100%, but I still think I’m at a high enough caliber to compete for a state title in all three events.”
He will also run the 4×400 relay and open 400 meters at state. He won regionals in the 400 in 46.25, the fastest 5A qualifying time for state and the 11th-best time in the nation for 2026, and Timberview had the fourth-best qualifying time in the 4×400 relay.
Favorite in Class 5A
Like Smith, Gilmore ran on the 4×100 at state last year. It could have been demoralizing coming that close to a state title, but breaking 40 seconds showed Timberview what it was capable of this year, as the prohibitive favorite in a 5A field in which no one else has run faster than 40.68.
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Timberview is also among the favorites to win the 5A team state championship after finishing in a tie for sixth last year.
Gilmore isn’t the only runner on Timberview’s 4×100 who is more than a pure 100- and 200-meter sprinter. Shaw, a move-in from Mesquite High, has the fastest qualifying time for state in the 300 hurdles at 36.30, a time that is tied for 11th nationally.
“With the relay, I try to make them the best individual runner that they can be, whether it’s the hurdles, the 400, the 100 or the 200,” Timberview coach Trey Bates said. “Coming together and putting them together on the relay, that’s the easy part, as long as they are coachable and do what they have to do.”
Gilmore, a Houston track signee, likely won’t be the only one of the four who competes in college. Shaw is a three-star wide receiver in football and lists 28 college offers on his 247Sports recruiting page, while Bates said Smith and Nguyen each have a Division I offer for track — Smith from Kansas and Nguyen from UT-Arlington — and have been talking to other schools.
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“With the collective group of talent, I think this is the fastest four guys that we’ve had together since I’ve been here,” Bates said.
That is saying something, given that Timberview has qualified for state in the 4×100 relay all five years that Bates has been the coach. Timberview finished sixth in 2022, fourth in 2023 and fifth in 2024 before last year’s runner-up performance.
This year’s success goes beyond the mix of light and hard tempo workouts and repeat 250s and 350s.
“What has made this group so good is that all of us have spent time out of school, in school together,” said Nguyen, who is in his first year on Timberview’s 4×100 team. “All of us have the deep bond of brothers.”
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Perhaps that is why all four runners think the team can break 40 seconds at state. Bates agrees with them, but he doesn’t want that to be the focus.
“The sky is the limit,” he said. “I think they can do 39, but it’s something that I try not to talk about. They talk about it enough, but like I tell them, we don’t chase times.”