All it takes is just one jump.

That is what ISU jumps and vault coach Ron McEachran said Tony Douglas and Oliver Koenig, his two senior jumpers, would need, in theory, to advance to the NCAA national meet from this weekend’s regional meet in Norman, Okla.

Only the top five participants from each event will move on, and jumpers have six jumps — three preliminary and three final — to get there.

McEachran said although they have six jumps to advance, if a jumper performs really well in a jump, he or she can choose to skip all remaining jumps if he or she feels his jump is good enough to finish in the top five.

“There is no advantage to being first, second or fifth,” McEachran said.

Koenig, who is from Leinzig, Germany, said he gets excited when he starts thinking about this weekend’s regionals.

“I’m feeling great,” he said. “At Big 12’s I felt OK, but not awesome. This time I feel a lot better.”

The long jumper has been battling foot injuries all season, so this will only be his fourth meet of the outdoor season.

Although he has the second best long jump in the conference this season (25′ 6 3/4″), Koenig said he doesn’t pay attention to things like that.

“I don’t really care much about the lists that appear before the meet,” Koenig said. “I like it when people look at the lists and say who is that with that jump, but I don’t care.”

This is Koenig’s first regional meet, but he has experience from competing at international meets, which are tough to qualify for

“It’s not that easy to travel in Germany, so you have to hit a pretty high mark to qualify,” he said. “These international meets I went to really help; it makes it easier to compete here.”

Koenig was a participant in the 2001 Student World Championships in Beijing, China.

Douglas jumped at John Jacobs Field last year for the conference meet, so he knows the lay of the land, especially because he set his personal record of 25′ 5″ there.

Although he qualified for regionals in both the long jump and the triple jump, he feels his long jump is the stronger of the two — he holds the fifth best jump in the conference with a 25′ 2″ leap — and was surprised he was able to qualify in the triple jump.

“The grace of God,” Douglas said. “Making it in the triple jump is just a blessing. We’ve been doing it since my freshman year, and it’s just starting to come together for me.”

McEachran said Douglas jumped just under 50 feet in the triple jump at conference and believes he will need to jump at least a foot farther in order to move on.

“He’s a pretty strong kid, so he can do it,” McEachran said.

In the long jump, McEachran says Koenig and Douglas will need to jump somewhere in the mid-25-foot range if they hope to advance.

Although there are only five available positions, neither jumper considers the other his competitor.

“This meet is all about placing in the top five,” Douglas says. “I’m gonna be out to win the meet just like he’s going to be out win the meet. A fifth-place finish is just as good as a first-place finish.”

“It’s nice to have someone there to push each other,” Koenig said. “That usually helps a lot.”

The weather will be a “wild card” Friday, McEachran said, because scattered thunderstorms have been predicted. Not only that, but the OU track can be windy, which might affect athletes as well.

“You could be jumping with a hurricane at your back or into a hurricane, but that doesn’t matter here,” he said.

With any meet like the regionals, McEachran said, there is more pressure to succeed.

“There’s a finality to it,” he said. “This is like the NCAA tournament — win or go home.”

Douglas and Koenig will perform their preliminary long jumps Friday night, and Douglas’ first triple jump is Saturday.