The Marshalltown boys track and field team has quite a few holes to fill this season, but the Bobcats have already gotten started on their work to fill those gaps.

Only three individual leaders from a year ago return to the lineup from last year in Gabe Wyant, last season’s long-jump leader, Bennett O’Hare, the fastest 800-meter runner, and Jordan Anderson, who had the top shot put mark. MHS boys head track coach Doug Bacon said that doesn’t mean the MHS boys are strapped for talent, they just have to rely on athletes that aren’t as well seasoned.

“My biggest concern is we are pretty young in some of those spots, the two kids who are going to be handling the duties for us in the mile and two mile are freshmen, and we’ve got some decent sprinters but they are also sophomores and we are going to be asking them to carry some pretty heavy loads for us in some spots,” Bacon said. “Who knows, it may not really come together for us until halfway through the season, but we will keep plugging away and do what we can. Whatever we can be we will try to be the best version of that by the end of the year.”

The path to success took shape a bit during Marshalltown’s first meet of the season at the Waukee Earlybird on Tuesday. The Bobcats finished atop the standings in four events, with Wyant winning the long jump with a distance of 20 feet, 2 1/2 inches, Giorgio DiIorio winning the 110-meter high hurdles in a time of 17.77 seconds, Deonte’ Dean taking first in the 100 after crossing the line in 12.08 and the 4×200 relay of Dean, Wyant, Jaiden Buchanan and Jonathan Hernandez winning with a time of 1:36.49.

Wyant in the long jump is already a foot further than he was a year ago and the 4×200 team already has four seconds on last season’s best time, and Bacon said there is potential for some strong relay combinations.

“I think we could have some pretty strong relays, it’s just where those will be. Whether we decide to go 4×200 or 4×400 or distance medley or sprint medley, it just largely has to do with how kids come along during the season,” he said.

In the individual events Bacon said he has to turn to guys like Wyant and DiIorio who have had success in the past to lead as the younger guys come along, especially with another great athlete in O’Hare sidelined with a leg injury he suffered during basketball season.

“Dru Dobbins in the throws and Gabe Wyant in the long jump are looking good,” he said of some individuals who will stand out. “Bennett O’Hare if he gets healthy will be good, Deonte’ Dean has looked really good so far and Jonathan Hernandez. Jonathan still suffers a little bit from a broken foot that he had as a sophomore, so coming out of the box is still something he is a bit tentative about. He prefers to anchor relays and if Tuesday was any indication he’s pretty good at that.”

Like many sports, Bacon said track and field is a process that you can’t rush and he’s not worried about some of the early results, as long as his team looks like it is improving.

“We want to make sure we are running our best by the end of the season,” he said. “By and large we always do, whatever that is relative to our talent level or how healthy we are. It just requires a lot of patience and sometimes that’s hard for a teenager to have that sort of patience.”

There is one early-season meet that Bacon would like his boys to show well in, however, and that’s their home meet in the Kenny Dean Invite, which runs on Thursday.

“Obviously we want to do as well as we can at every meet, but in particular our home meet,” he said. “We get one home meet a year, and it would be nice to be as competitive as we can possibly be there. After that it’s just improve throughout the year, try and stay at least in that fourth-place spot in the conference and then see what we can get through the district meet.”

Marshalltown will be in action twice in this upcoming week, first competing in the Des Moines East Invitational on Monday, then at home on Thursday for the Kenny Dean Invite, which will start with field events at 4:15 p.m.