An 11th-place finish at the Big 12 track meet in Austin, Texas, last weekend doesn’t mean there weren’t some positives for the Cyclone women’s track and field team.

“It was kind of a mixed bag,” said head women’s track and field coach Dick Lee of the Cyclones 26-point output at the three-day meet — ahead of Oklahoma State, and 6.5 points behind 10th-place Texas Tech.

The highlight for Iowa State, of course, was senior Gina Rickert claiming her fourth Big 12 high jump title in her last conference meet with a leap of 6 1/2. It was Rickert’s second outdoor title to go with two indoor championships.

“One of her big goals was to win this last chance for a title,” Lee said.

He said the way the finals unfolded on Monday night was a little surprising. Rickert and Lee were expecting some tough competition from the other jumpers in the field.

“[Rickert] was the only one to clear 5-10,” Lee said.

Rickert said the way her victory unfolded was fairly unusual.

“At 5-10 3/4, I was the first jumper, and I cleared on my first attempt,” she said. “Then I watched eight other competitors each miss at [that height] three times. That’s 24 jumps.”

About forty minutes after clearing the crossbar, Rickert realized she had won the title.

“It was sort of anti-climactic,” she said.

Lee said freshman hurdler Rebecca Williams capped off a consistent first season with an impressive performance in both the 100-meter hurdles and the 400-meter hurdles.

“She has been very solid, both in the indoor and outdoor seasons,” Lee said. “Now she’s seeing the results from that hard work.”

Williams finished eighth in the 100-meter hurdles finals with a time of 13.77 seconds, but she aggravated an injury in the race that kept her from competing in the 400-meter hurdles finals. She had qualified in sixth place in that event in preliminaries Sunday.

Lee said Williams got to see how she stood up against the best in the Big 12 meet. The Big 12 Conference and Southeastern Conference, he said, feature many of the best hurdlers in the nation.

Junior thrower Susan Sherman had one of the best all-around performances of the meet, scoring in all three of her throws.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever won three medals at conference, so I was pretty excited about that,” she said.

Sherman’s best finish was a third-place performance in the discus Monday on a throw of 165-7.

Saturday, Sherman threw the hammer 173-8 — an improvement of over eight feet from her previous season best at the Drake Relays.

“She actually [set a new personal record] three times in the hammer throw,” Lee said.

Sherman also had a sixth-place effort in the shot put Sunday with an effort of 47-8.

Lee said a very mild spring in Ames during the outdoor season made the 100-degree weather throughout the three-day championship meet a challenge for his athletes.

“The weather made it very tough,” he said. “Some [Cyclones] ran well in prelim[inaries], but not in finals.

“In different weather conditions, I think a couple of people who placed seventh or eighth might have gotten up to fourth or fifth.”

Iowa State’s first appearance in an NCAA Regional meet will take place in Lincoln, Neb., May 30—31. This is the first year the NCAA has placed an intermediate qualifying meet between the regular season and the national championships.