The ISU men’s track and field team only participated in three of the limited pool of events for the first day of the Big 12 Outdoor Championship at the Cyclone Sports Complex, but it would be hard to tell with the exciting performances by two of the athletes.

Thrower Henry Kelley and decathlete Taylor Sanderson put on a show for the ISU faithful in the small crowd on May 15, both notching second-place finishes and personal records in their respective events. 

In the first of two days in the decathlon, Sanderson put up a score of 3,786 points, which is 40 lower than his first-day mark set at the Mt. SAC Relays earlier this season, in which he racked up 7,360 points. 

Sanderson will have one more day with some of his favorite events, the 110-meter hurdles and discus, and to improve on the mark he set earlier this season in order to solidify his position at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in June, which he says will take around 7,500 points. 

“You look at the scores, I’m in striking distance,” said Sanderson, who is just under 200 points behind current leader Thomas Cheval of Oklahoma. “I can maybe win tomorrow, that’s all you can ask for.”

Sanderson started his day with the 100-meter dash and got off to a hot start, registering the first of his two personal records with a 11.09-second time. 

It was the high jump that gave the redshirt junior trouble from his point of view, clearing 6-feet-1.5-inches. Sanderson finished the day strong, though, beating his personal record in the 400-meter run by more than an eighth of a second.

He wasn’t happy with the jump but feels he is in a good position to help out his team on the second day.

“Obviously, I’d like to have more [points],” Sanderson said. “But I think if things go my way tomorrow, I’ll have a chance to win. Coming into today, if you would’ve told me that, I would have been really happy.” 

Kelley might have had the same mindset going into the day. It was hard for him to imagine that he would break his personal record by more than eight feet, but he did — and grabbed eight points for his team to boot. 

The redshirt senior wasn’t happy with where he was following his performance at the Musco Twilight Invitational in Iowa City two weeks ago and had some time to think during the two-week break. 

“I kind of hit a low point, I was just frustrated because I didn’t feel I was at where I was [earlier in the season],” Kelley said. “One day I just decided to just let it go, and try to relax and have fun with it again. And then I started doing what I was supposed to do again.”

That he did.

His third throw of the day sailed 196-feet-4-inches and put him in second place behind Texas Tech’s Kole Weldon. 

Kelley had a specific mentality heading into the event, one that he worked on to rid himself of the the low point that he mentioned. He did exactly that and helped the Cyclones in the process.

“I was going to go in and try to do right what I’ve been doing right in my technique for a while,” Kelley said. “Basically go in and be aggressive and throw my best. No matter what happened, I wanted to try my best and that would let me leave happy.”

Kelley’s throw also put him fourth on the all-time ISU hammer throw list.

Trey Achterhoff also took part in the javelin throw for the first time this season. He threw 178-feet-11-inches.  

Sanderson will kick off the Cyclones’ packed Saturday with the decathlon’s 110-meter hurdles scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Heavy rain and storms are in the forecast for the second day of the conference meet, so a delay could occur.