Highlighted by a young group of sprinters and a deep group of throwers, the ISU women’s track and field team saw some good early-season success last weekend.

In the first meet of the outdoor season the Cyclones worked their way to four personal bests and had several athletes earn regionally qualifying marks in their events.

“We had some really good things happen this weekend,” said head coach Corey Ihmels.

Junior Lashawn Wright set a personal best in the 100-meter dash prelims on Friday, and then followed that up with a third-place performance in Saturday’s final. Wright’s 11.7 in the prelims was under the 11.75 regional qualifying mark, and better than her career-best by .04 seconds.

“That’s what we’ve been working toward, and she’s shown us that she’s ready to do that,” said sprints coach Nate Wiens. “She’s not even close to her peak or what she even can do, so we’re excited.”

Wright struggled during the indoor season with injury, and is looking ahead of schedule on her quest to become one of the Big 12’s elite sprinters.

“Lashawn has really improved over the course of the year,” Ihmels said. “If she can stay healthy from here on out she’s going to be able to do some great things.”

Wright also participated in the 4-by-400-meter relay event as a member of the group that finished 10th at the Raleigh Relays in Raleigh, N.C.

“We saw a lot of fight [from our relay teams],” Wiens said. “When you’re a northern team with cold weather it’s hard to get out and open up the legs.”

All of the relay team members are working on a new handoff technique that should shave precious time off their time. Wiens said learning a new technique can take time, and saw several things that could be better going forward with the relays.

“We opened up almost a second faster than the girls even ran last year,” Wiens said. “So, we’re saying ‘Wow, if we can get these handoffs right we’ll see what happens.’”

One of the more surprising efforts came from freshman Kianna Elahi in the 400-meter hurdle event. Elahi regionally qualified in the event with a 59.98, impressive in her first competition, earning her fifth place.

Wiens said Elahi was still upset after her race, believing she didn’t run as well as she could have. He said hunger is evident throughout his sprints group and shows him the sprinters are ready to improve.

“Kianna’s only going to get better,” Wiens said. “She nailed it perfectly Saturday, but she can still go farther. She should still be able to drop quite a bit off of that time.”

Also in Raleigh, the throws group saw two personal bests and five marks inside the top ten in the hammer throw and shot put competitions.

Senior Amy Waggoner shattered her previous best by 12 feet on her way to a second-place mark in the hammer throw, and sophomore Britta Christofferson’s eighth-place hammer throw was eight feet better than her previous best. Freshmen Laishema Hampton and Danielle Frere finished fourth and fifth, respectively, in the shot put, just ahead of Christofferson, who came in sixth.

“We’ve got some great individuals in that group, but they’re a group by committee a little bit, I think,” Ihmels said.

During the indoor season, the throwers put up strong performances every time they competed. However, it always seemed that a new thrower was atop the standings at the end of each day, showing how deep the throws group is.

Also, because Waggoner is the only senior, much of the depth comes from underclassmen, giving the coaches a lot of hope for the short and long-term futures of the team.

“They like to compete, they like to work hard, and I’m not surprised. I expected big things out of that group.” Ihmels said.

All told, the Cyclones had seven regionally qualifying marks and did it without a strong performance from potential All-American Grace Kemmey and without Lisa Koll, the defending national champion in the 10,000-meter run.

“Seven regional marks over the weekend is great,” Ihmels said. “But, all-in-all, the weekend served it’s purpose. We were trying to get some work outdoors and got a chance to see where we’re at in our training.”