As winter gives way to spring, the ISU track teams are preparing to head outdoors.

Each year, there are two separate track seasons — an indoor season and an outdoor season. The 2003 indoor season concluded with the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships on March 14 and 15.

The Cyclone women had two representatives at the indoor national championships, Gina Rickert in the high jump and Susan Sherman in the weight throw.

Rickert and Sherman will be expected to lead the team in the outdoor season as well. Rickert had the best indoor jump in the women’s collegiate ranks this year, but she was not able to match her season best at the national championships, and placed third. As a senior, she is now approaching her final chance for a national championship.

The weight throw is an indoor-only event, but Sherman will have other opportunities to excel during the outdoor season. She placed second in the discus at the 2002 Big 12 outdoor championships.

“I will definitely be among the top competitors in the Big 12 in the discus,” Sherman said. “I like outdoor more because I like to be outdoors and because the discus is my favorite event.”

Women’s coach Dick Lee said his team will also be strong in the 400-meter hurdles, an outdoor-only event. He expects strong performances from two freshmen, Rebecca Williams and Sarah Klein. Both of them had good indoor seasons, he said.

The women will be looking to improve on their eighth place team finish at the Big 12 indoor championships. Iowa State had 45 points but was within striking distance of fourth place Kansas, which had 57.5 points.

The men’s team will try to erase some bad memories from the indoor season. At the Big 12 indoor championships, they finished 12th out of 12 teams with 12 points.

One of the reasons that men’s coach Steve Lynn expects a better outdoor season is the availability of key athletes such as Daniel Kaczmarczyk, Matt Murdock and Jamal Salahuddin. All were recovering from injuries during the indoor season and redshirted.

Kaczmarczyk, a junior, has qualified for the national championships in the long jump both indoors and outdoors in previous seasons. Murdock does not have prior collegiate experience, but was the 2000 North American Junior champion in the javelin.

“Adding them obviously makes us a lot stronger outdoors,” Lynn said. “Matt will be an All-American for us someday.”

The first major meet of the outdoor season is the Drake Relays, which will be held in Des Moines on April 25-26. After Drake, the teams will turn their focus toward the Big 12 Championships and the NCAA Championships.

There will be a new step required to qualify for the NCAA Championships this season. In the past, the NCAA has simply kept track of performances throughout the season, and invited the top performers to the national meet.

This season, though, the season’s top performers will receive invitations to various NCAA Regional meets, and the top performers at the regional meets will qualify for the national meet.

The ISU coaches said they were not in favor of the change.

The men’s and women’s teams both took a few athletes to a meet at Florida State last weekend. The full teams will see their first action of the outdoor season on April 4 and 5 at the Clemson Relays in Clemson, S. C.