The ISU men’s and women’s track and field teams will send a handful of runners to the Texas Relays Thursday and Friday in Austin, with a majority of the team competing in the UNI Messersmith Invitational Saturday at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

The men’s team will send Neil Hines, Tony Douglas and Chase Madison to Texas, and the women’s team will send Erica Lynn, Leigh Wagner and Sara Boisen.

“We’re taking them down to Texas to get really good competition and put them into probably some tougher situations,” said Ron McEachran, jumps and vaults coach, who will be traveling with the group. “The races are going to be real fast.”

Madison and Boisen have qualified for the regional meet late April in Austin.

The others will attempt to qualify as soon as this weekend against some of the best competition in the nation, with top athletes from Texas, Texas A&M and Washington State, among others.

“That’s kind of what we put them there for – to get them into real serious, heated competition early, to get them prepared for the conference and regional meet – and, hopefully, the NCAA meet after that,” McEachran said.

The entire team will not compete Thursday and Friday, however. Hines will compete in the pentathlon, Douglas in the long jump and triple jump, Madison in the weight throw, Lynn in the heptathlon, Wagner in the high jump and Boisen in the 400-meter hurdles.

The rest of the team will compete at Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls Saturday.

The men’s team’s plan is to get some races in to help them the rest of the year.

“The majority of the rest of the team is going to run up at UNI, do some training-type races, races to set us up for the rest of the year,” said men’s coach Steve Lynn.

“We’ve got a few people that didn’t compete down in Houston [last weekend], so they’ll get a chance to have their meet opener up there.”

Most of the team will compete in events they are not used to.

“I just want to get up there and get an opportunity for people to run some different races, just run something a little different, as far as their distances are concerned,” Lynn said.

Lynn said the competitors would be excited to face people they competed against in high school.

“I know that there’s a couple of other Iowa kids that competed against UNI kids in high school,” Lynn said. “I know they want to get a chance to run against them – so there’s going to be some good races.”

Women’s Head Coach Dick Lee thinks the UNI meet is a chance for the younger team members to gain experience.

“We have some kids that – the more racing opportunities they get – the better off they will be later on in the year, so we’ll get just continued improvement,” Lee said. “It will be a low-key meet, but for some of our kids it’s going to be as much competition as they’re ready for, too.”

Some people who competed at Rice University last week will likely take a weekend off.

“We may have some of our upper classmen that take the weekend off. Some of them that raced last week and traveled to Houston may just take this weekend off and get ready for Missouri,” Lee said.

The first event of the UNI Messersmith Invitational will be the women’s discus at 11 a.m. Saturday in Cedar Falls. The Texas Relays will begin with the men’s decathlon at noon Friday in Austin.