Most people would just use a ruler.

The ISU women’s track team, however, must use a different method to measure how far it has come in year two under head coach Corey Ihmels.

Before the 2007-08 season, ISU athletic director Jamie Pollard bestowed the men’s and women’s track and field programs on Ihmels. Ihmels and his new coaching staff hit the ground running as they took on the arduous task of rebuilding the program from the ground up.

Now, they’ll get to see how far they’ve come this weekend at the Big 12 Indoor Championships, the second under Ihmels.

“Anytime you go against the Big 12, you go against some of the best in the country in every event area,” Ihmels said. “We’re still in the building process. We really need to see progression in a lot of areas.”

Last season, the Cyclone women finished 10th at the Indoor Championships, led by All-American Lisa Koll, who won the 5,000-meter run and finished second in the 3,000-meter competition.

After the Big 12 Championships last season, Ihmels was quoted saying he was “disappointed” with the 10th-place finish, but knew that the team’s performance was a good place to start building for the future.

“You look back at the points we scored last year and there were a lot of young kids,” Ihmels said. “This season we’re taking a pretty young group, but they’ve now had another year to build on.”

Ihmels acknowledged that veterans such as Koll, Grace Kemmey and Jenna Caffrey needed to have successful weekends in order for the younger athletes to see success as well.

The time has also provided more chances for the coaches to get their plans in motion, and for the upperclassmen to teach the newcomers.

“The biggest change I’ve seen is having everybody on the same page,” junior Lashawn Wright said. “We all come out and motivate each other. We come out to practice and do exactly what we’re supposed to do.”

Each event area will face a unique challenge this weekend as each group is at a different stage of the rebuilding process. Two of the three assistant coaches — jumps coach Pete Herber and throws coach John Dagata — were present at last season’s championships, but sprints coach Nate Wiens is still new to the staff. Wiens was brought on board six months ago, just before preparation for the 2008-09 season began.

“Nothing great is going to happen in a year in and a half,” Dagata said about the progression he has seen since last February. “I think we’re a lot better as a staff and as a team.

“When you look at results, we have more of the good people. We want the best people, but overall we’re definitely just a little bit deeper.”

Dagata inherited a good group of throwers including senior Amy Waggoner and sophomore Britta Christofferson. Meanwhile, Herber and Wiens both got very young groups that lacked depth in their respective event areas.

All of the Cyclone coaching staff are ready to get going into this Championship meet, as they are anxious to see how the team’s hard work will pay off. The meet will provide the best look at the progress of the program, to see how far they’ve come in the Big 12 — one of the nation’s top conferences.

“The good thing about track and field is that it’s very black and white,” Wiens said. “It’s not like football with the ‘x’s and o’s,’ it’s more of ‘Where do I stand on a conference list?’ This is probably the best meet in the nation bar maybe one or two other conferences. This is a good opportunity to get that good level of competition that we might not see until Big 12 Outdoors or [NCAA] Regionals.”

So, what kind of measuring stick will this be for the program’s progress in the season and a half under Ihmels and company?

“We’re going to have some great things happen, and some not so great things happen,” Ihmels said. “We’ve really got to be on our game this weekend, and it’s exciting for us to get a chance to see how far we’ve come.”