Full disclosure: Jake Lanoux is a member of the cycling team.

The cycling team took top honors at the South Central Collegiate Track Conference Championships in Houston last weekend in a ramp up to the upcoming collegiate track National Championships in Colorado Springs, Colorado this week.

Joshua Buchel, accounting freshman, and Maxyna Cottam, fine arts freshman, both claimed individual overall titles and became conference champions with three separate wins (sprint, scratch and elimination) followed by the cycling team winning the team classification.

“(The conference championship) was a nice tuneup,” said John Paul Blanton, business sophomore. “To see where everyone was fitness wise before we jump into the deep-end at Nats [Nationals]. It was a good opportunity to test out different set-ups before the real deal next week,” Blanton said.

The majority of events held during the conference championships are similar to the events at the National Championships making the 10 cyclists prepare.

“It was good competition,” said Pablo Cruz, exercise physiology freshman and winner of Saturday night’s points race. “It helps for the ones who didn’t have the experience to get more racing, and experience with timing in before next week.”

For the cycling track team (eight of which are freshman) the race before Nationals, they said, helped to boost their confidence since racing on the track is a new experience.

“I felt pretty good, I’ve only done a few track races,” said TC [Tice] Porterfield, business freshman. “And so with this being a week out before Nats it was a really big help. I’m just hoping I can put [it] together for the team. It’s going to be fun,” said Porterfield.