To be the best, you have to beat the best, and this weekend the ISU women’s track team hopes to do just that at the famous Drake Relays hosted by Drake University in Des Moines.

The Cyclones will have to run some of their best times of the year in order to be able to compete and possibly even place. It is an opportunity Cyclones like LaShawn Wright strive to make the most of.

Wright, a sophomore from Texas, is used to running against the top competition, having grown up running in the Texas Relays.

“Well, I’ve always ran against top athletes, so it is an honor,” Wright said. “It shows me that I still have alot of work to do, but it tells me that I am good enough to compete and I have a chance to be one of the top athletes.”

Wright will also compete in the 4-by-100 meter relay this weekend for the Cyclones.

Along with the 4-by-100 meter relay team, the Cyclones will look to a Drake Relays veteran, sophomore Jenna Caffrey. This is the sixth year in a row that Caffrey will be competing in the Drake Relays, as she ran in them all four years in high school and placed second in the shuttle hurdle relay as a freshman last year. Caffrey has won the 110-meter hurdles in two of her three outdoor meets this year after sitting out the indoor season due to injury, but has yet to face a field as competitive as she will this weekend.

Caffrey, like Wright, looks forward to running against the nation’s best track runners and is hopeful that she will be able to pull off a win.

“Running against some of the top hurdlers in the nation brings out the best in me,” Caffrey said. “Racing against the top hurdlers in the nation pushes me to elevate my race. And right now I need to compete in a meet that is going to push me to step up my race.”

Some of the top athletes in the country are competing this weekend, and head coach Corey Ihmels is excited by what his Cyclones can do but admits they don’t have as many people in the field as they would have liked.

“We are very excited about what Jenna can do, we are going to put some relays together and we are excited about what the 4-by-100-meter relay can do,” Ihmels said. “Is it where we want to be? No. We want to have more kids out there and want to keep improving and keep getting better from where we are right now.

“I am excited about who we are putting on the track and hopefully we get some nice weather and we can run to the best of our ability.”