DES MOINES — Since claiming first place honors at the Big 12 Indoor Championships, ISU high jumper Cameron Ostrowski has been battling an ankle injury that has kept him sidelined from outdoor competition.

Now, just less than two months later, Ostrowski got his first chance to compete since being sidelined after the NCAA Indoor Championships when he stepped into Drake Stadium for the Drake Relays during the weekend.

“It was exciting to get back into competition and get a regional qualifying mark,” Ostrowski said.

His high jump mark of 7-1 earned him a fourth-place finish among one of the strongest fields of jumpers in the nation.

“A lot of the guys I was competing with today will end up at regionals so it was nice to go head to head with those guys,” Ostrowski said.

Saturday’s jump left Ostrowski with some promising achievements besides the fourth place finish. The jump marked the eighth time in his career that he has jumped 7 feet or higher, and he did not fall short to any athlete from the Big 12 but only to All-American leapers from the SEC.

During the week, Ostrowski didn’t know how the ankle would hold up during his first outdoor meet, but the stage of the Drake Relays added to his fire to compete.

“It’s a great meet. You don’t typically go to a lot of meets where there is such a large fan base like that, so that definitely gets all of the athletes extremely excited to compete,” Ostrowski said.

As the competition progressed, however, he said the ankle that has been injured all season long started to become more painful.

“Towards the latter part of the competition my ankle started to bug me again. I was hoping to go around 2.24 [meters] so I was disappointed with the mark that I put down, but at the end of the day, I’ll still be competing after conference which was the main goal going into the meet today,” Ostrowski said.

Ostrowski has been through the process of recovering from a nagging injury before and he is also not scheduled to compete for a couple of meets. This down time will give him another break for his ankle he said he certainly needs, which will allow him to go through his strengthening process again.

“I’ll mostly just be doing lifts. Prior to this meet, I’ve been on two different ankle strengthening plans, one with the trainers that I do every day and one with coach [Jeremy] Sudbury that we do three times a week,” Ostrowski said. “I think the biggest factor for me getting healthy is just rest. I’m very comfortable with my high jump technique right now so I feel like I can just jump into meets without much practice and still get the job done, as long as I’m healthy.”

He will now be putting his focus toward his next competition at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships in Lubbock, Texas on May 16 through 18.

“I might have jumped back into competition a little too early, but I have three more weeks to let my ankle rest so I’m hoping to feel better at conference than I did today,” Ostrowski said.

During these next three weeks of no competition and getting his ankle ready, Ostrowski talked about how he has one thing on his mind: another conference championship.

“My goal for conference is to [get a personal record] and win another Big 12 championship,” Ostrowski said. “The Texas Tech guys are my main competition for conference, so I’d love to go into their house and beat them again,”