The fall season has come to an end for the ISU men’s golf team as the Cyclones finished ninth at the Baylor Intercollegiate Tuesday in Waco.

In a very close tournament, ISU’s total of 872 was only 14 strokes behind the team champion Southeastern Louisiana.

Southeastern Louisiana won the invitational with a team score of 858. Louisiana-Lafayette ended two strokes back to finish in the runner-up position. Host school Baylor finished in third, only two shots behind Lafayette.

Jaime Faidley led the Cyclone charge with a top ten finish. The sophomore completed his three rounds with a final total of 214, tying for 10th place. Josh Clay was hot on his teammate’s heels, finishing in a tie for 13th place at 216.

Kevin Oswald tied for 18th, one stroke behind Clay, while Matt Gatchel ended with a score of 225.

Phil Slovitt completed the Cyclone scoring with a three-round total of 237.

Faidley made his mark with the help of a first-round 67, tying him for the second best round ever by an ISU golfer. He is now the fourth player to lead the Cyclones’ tournament scoring this year.

“That means that when we’re all on, we should be really tough,” Gatchel said. “As long as we have someone playing well, eventually we’re all going to step it up.”

Baylor’s Jimmy Walker shot the round of the tournament, 66, to help him rise to medalist honors. Chris Stroud from Lamar and Josh McCoy of Texas A&M dueled to matching rounds of 70-67-73 to tie for second at 210.

The Cyclones competed with top teams in this tournament, beating Big 12 conference teams Texas Tech, Missouri and Nebraska. At one point this season, these teams did better than Iowa State in tournament play.

“It was the strongest field we played against this season,” Gatchel said. “It feels good to beat teams that beat us this year. This tournament was a good way to end the season. It shows that we’re improving.”

Now that the fall tournaments are through, the team will work on building its strength and endurance over the winter off-season. The squad set goals before last week’s tournament at Louisiana-Monroe, which Gatchel knows will be a focus for the spring.

” If we keep setting goals and improving, it doesn’t matter who we play, we’ll look at being in the upper echelon of teams,” Gatchel said.