Cyclone women tune up for Big 12 meet in two weeks

Gabe Davis

With the Big 12 conference meet just two weekends away, the ISU women’s track team will be ready to give a top-rated performance.The icy weather may have been enough to cancel classes last Friday, but it wasn’t enough to cancel the ISU Classic. The coaches are all very optimistic about their team’s performance over the weekend, having set many personal records by members of the team. “I thought the kids performed really well,” sprinting coach Scott Roberts said. “The kids stepped up and a lot of them ran their best performances of the year and competed very well, so I was very pleased with that. We had lots of personal bests and those types of things, and I thought that they really rose to that challenge.” A few of the top performers were Aurelia Trywianski in the 60m hurdles and Ola Adetiba in the 200m dash.Trywianski qualified for nationals with a time of 8.26 seconds and was right on the heals of former Canadian Olympian Perdita Felicien. “I’m real happy with the way that she performed last weekend,” Roberts said. “Aurelia also has the fastest time in Poland this year, which is her home country.”Trywianski will get to compete in the superstar track meet Sunday at Northern Iowa, Roberts said.”It was pretty good competition. The girl who I was running against [Felicien] also ran her personal best,” Trywianski said. “I’m always looking forward to good competition and someone better.”Adetiba won the 200 meter dash with a time of 23.99.”I was real proud with the way Ola ran,” Roberts said. “It was the second-best indoor performance all-time at Iowa State behind her own school record of 23.95.”Adetiba cut her foot Sunday night and is now recovering after having 12 stitches, but says she’ll be ready to compete at the conference meet.”I’m just hoping to drop my qualifying time,” Adetiba said. “I like track meets at that level of competition because that’s how the Big 12 is going to be.”The ISU Classic posed a great opportunity for the women to compete against top competition in the nation and gain experience for the upcoming conference meet, Adetiba said.”We saw some conference schools, so that was good,” Adetiba said. “A couple of people performed well across the board in different events.”Roberts also said that one of the more amazing performances of the day was by Sheba Clark who placed third in the 60m dash while suffering from the flu.”She ran a really competitive race,” Roberts said. “I thought that took a lot of courage.”This weekend, Iowa State will send a few team members to the UNI Open for one last training meet before conference next weekend. The meet will mainly host Division III schools and will not be scored so that teams can compete to get more experience.”It’s kind of a low-key meet,” Roberts said. “We’re not going to have everybody go, just some people that we feel need another race.”