First place finishes by Lisa Griebel and Gina Curtis gave Iowa State a solid finish at the Big 12 Championship meet, and the team was close to finishing even higher.

The Cyclones finished fifth with 60 points, six points away from fourth place, at the meet held in Lincoln, Neb.

“I knew it was going to be a jam of teams in there,” ISU head coach Dick Lee said. “That’s just the way it works out. I’m very pleased with our performance.”

Griebel’s throw of 53-11 3/4 in the shot put was her best throw of the season thus far. It was her sixth Big 12 Championship of her career.

“I was really nervous going in,” she said. “It was neck and neck between the top four – anybody could have won.”

Griebel headed into the meet ranked third, but took the lead in the preliminaries.

“I went into finals with the lead and kept that. Thank goodness,” she said.

Lee said he was very happy with Griebel’s performance.

“Lisa had a strong performance. She held the lead through finals, and a lot of kids wouldn’t have had the strength to do that,” he said.

Fellow senior All-American Gina Curtis tied the winner’s jump of 6 3/4 but took second due to a miss on the attempt. Neither jumper could clear 6-2.

“Gina had dominated the high jump up until that point. The other jumper had a total of seven misses, and Gina only had two.” Lee said. “… [Gina] had two great jumps at 6-2. One of them we thought was going to stay, but it fell off like a gust of wind came through.”

Other Cyclone place winners included Sheba Clarke, who placed third in the 60-meter dash, and Barbara Szlendakova, who placed third in the long jump and the pentathalon.

Clarke’s time of 7.47 seconds had to be rounded out to the thousandths of a second to determine the second and third place winner, Lee said.

“It was by an eyelash. Sheba had a little bit of a misstep in the finals, and she felt that cost her the win,” he said.

Szlendakova placed third in the long jump with a jump of 19-5 1/2.

She competed in the finals only after completing the pentathalon shortly before.

“Barbara had a solid day. [The first place finisher] had a good day, and that was the difference,” Lee said. “Other kids came in fresh to the long jump and Barbara had been competing since 10:30 in the morning. That makes for a long day of track for her.”

Teammate Susan Sherman placed second in the weight throw and fifth in the shot put.

“She had only thrown a few times this year, and she stepped into conference and placed fifth,” Lee said.

Other highlights included Lenka Kalabova’s third-place finish in the 800-meter run, clocking a 2:08.89.

It was a personal best for Kalabova and a NCAA provisional qualifying time.

Lee felt overall the Cyclones had a strong meet.

“I was really proud of their effort in the last two days,” Lee said. “With a couple of breaks, we could have had three or four individual titles, but the effort was there.”

Next action for the Cyclones will be Friday and Saturday in Ames.

The meet is the last chance for the provisional qualifiers to qualify for the NCAA Nationals.