The ISU men’s track and field team can overcome a discouraging 11th place showing at last week’s Big 12 track and field championships in several ways, head coach Steve Lynn said.

One would be a strong showing in the Cyclones’ first-ever appearance at an NCAA Midwest Regional meet, held Friday and Saturday in Lincoln, Neb.

Despite scoring only 27 team points at the Big 12 meet, Iowa State will send 14 athletes to the regional meet.

“That’s pretty impressive, really,” Lynn said. “That just shows how strong our conference is.”

Lynn said his team had many problems at the conference meet.

“It was disappointing on several levels,” he said. “We had some season bests, but you hope when you go to that meet that everyone has a season best.”

The worst surprise for the Cyclone team came when freshman sprinter Jared Graham got sick after the preliminaries of the 400-meter dash. He was unable to run in the 4×100 meter relay finals on May 19. Junior Andy Hadden replaced him, and the team finished sixth.

“We felt like our [4×100] team had a real chance to finish in the top three,” Lynn said.

The sixth place relay continued a difficult meet for anchor runner Daniel Kaczmarczyk, who had taken fourth the day before in the long jump.

“[Kaczmarczyk] was really disappointed in the long jump,” Lynn said. “He felt he could have won that.”

Less than an hour after the 4×100 meter relay, Kaczmarczyk competed in the triple jump — for the first time this season. He finished in fourth place.

“Instead of hanging his head, he came back and had a good performance,” Lynn said.

Another bright spot for the Cyclones, Lynn said, was Hadden, a walk-on from Oskaloosa.

Lynn said Hadden did well filling in for Graham in the 4×100 meter relay and also ran well in the 4×400 meter relay and the 400-meter hurdles, where he finished sixth with a time of 53.63 seconds.

Junior Ryan Boyington took fifth in the 400-meter hurdles in 53.30.

Sophomore Craig Cartier finished seventh in the men’s 1,500-meter run with a time of 3:51. Assistant coach Corey Ihmels said that Cartier showed good consistency throughout the season.

“Craig made a positive step,” he said. “It was the first time he scored in the conference…he did a good job.”

Another runner, freshman Alfred Singoei, competed in his first conference meet in the 10,000-meter run, finishing eighth in 31:48.

Lynn said both the rest of this season and the next year could be exciting for his team.

“No seniors scored points for us [at the Big 12 meet],” he said. “Everybody’s coming back.”

Cartier agreed that there was reason for optimism.

“As a team, we’re on the threshold of making a jump to the next level,” he said. “We’re in the best conference in the country.”

There’s still some important competition left in this season, Lynn said.

Iowa State’s individual qualifiers will be vying to finish in the top five at this weekend’s regional meet and advance to nationals. The 4×100 and 4×400 meter relay teams will need to finish in the top three to advance.

Lynn said Kaczmarczyk has a good chance to advance in the long jump. Other Cyclones with high hopes include junior Rocky Moore, a seventh place Big 12 finisher in the shot put, sophomore Jamal Salahuddin in the discus, and freshman Matt Murdock in the javelin.