Cold and rainy weather couldn’t freeze out Neil Hines’ bid to qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

Last weekend’s Texas Relays were supposed to provide the Cyclones a chance to qualify for postseason meets, but after Saturday’s events were rained out, only Hines was able to capitalize on his chance through his decathlon performance Wednesday and Thursday.

“I knew going in that I wouldn’t have to perform outside of my ability by any means, I would just have to have a solid performance throughout, and that’s what I did,” Hines said.

Hines’ second-place score of 7,314 set a new personal record and put him in the top 10 in the nation for the event. Although the NCAA automatic qualifying score is 7,500, his score of 7,259 got him into last year’s championships, and he said he expects the same this year.

Hines will now gear his training toward the Big 12 Championships on May 11 to 13, and the National Championships on June 6 to 9.

“Everything’s building up towards Big 12s and Nationals,” Hines said. “I’ll pick up the intensity after I recover from this decathlon. I’ll be able to hopefully go to another level of training right now as far as intensity.”

The score came without Hines setting a personal best in any individual event.

Coach Steve Lynn said his performance was promising, because while it was overall his personal best, it still left a lot of room for improvement.

“There weren’t any great events and there weren’t any terrible events,” Lynn said. “The exciting thing is he can get some PRs [personal records] along the way here and put those together for the Big 12 meets and the NCAA meet.”

After battling injuries throughout his career, Hines said he wouldn’t be in this position without the athletic trainers.

“I do have to give the trainers a lot of credit for this, because coming into this year, I knew [having them] was going to be the only thing that would allow me to be an All-American,” he said.

As for the rest of the team, Jared Lewis and Kellen Burl failed to qualify for the finals in the 100-meter hurdles and 100m dash on Friday. The 4×400-meter relay team was unable to compete Saturday. Also, the distance runners were scheduled to compete in the Mark Messersmith Invitational on Saturday at Northern Iowa, but the event was also canceled because of weather.

“It’s part of the sport that you have to be able to make adjustments. Unfortunately when [the weather’s] not right, you can’t do the things you need to do,” Lynn said. “I think we’re still going to be fine. Our biggest meets are still ahead of us. We need some good weather this weekend and next weekend before Drake.”

Next up for Iowa State is another split-squad weekend, with part of the team heading to the Jim Duncan Invitational on Saturday in Des Moines, and part of the team going to the Sooner Open on Friday in Norman, Okla.