Last weekend was memorable for ISU backup forward Kelly Cizek.

She was the first Cyclone off the bench against KSC Szekszard of Hungary Saturday. She was productive, scoring nine points while grabbing seven rebounds.

And the night before, Cizek got engaged.

Chris Hanfelt, a 24-year old graduate of Iowa State, proposed to Cizek underneath the Campanile last Friday.

The couple met when Hanfelt spent time as a trainer for the men’s basketball team two-and-a-half years ago.

“July 20, 2002,” Cizek said, is the big day.

Practicality decided what date the wedding would fall on.

Hanfelt, by that time, will have completed his graduate work at the University of Iowa in physical therapy.

Cizek, by 2002, will be seeking a job at a public relations firm.

The junior from Omaha looks at the coming basketball season in the same sensible light.

Cizek doesn’t think she has done “anything different” from years past to earn the playing time she enjoyed Saturday. She believes the opportunity simply presented itself.

Cizek’s mother Bonnie was never given an opportunity to compete athletically. “They didn’t have any women’s sports for her,” Cizek said.

But Marc Cizek, Kelly’s father, who played football, basketball, and ran track for Nebraska and Omaha, always told Cizek and her two younger sisters, that their mother was the true athlete of the family.

“She just looks athletic,” Cizek said.

Wherever the athletic endowment came from, it flourished inside young Cizek.

After being named by the Omaha World-Herald as the “Female Athlete of the Year” in 1997, Cizek came to Iowa State with hopes to excel on the volleyball court and with the track team in the high jump.

But after a season of volleyball, she decided it “wasn’t my thing,” and quit the team in April of 1998.

Before she hung her knee pads and laces, Cizek spoke with Iowa State Women’s Basketball Head Coach Bill Fennelly. He remembered Cizek from her hoop days in high school.

The following winter, Cizek began playing basketball for Iowa State.

After the lengthy basketball season, Cizek decided to forego the year with the track team as well. During her freshman year she finished fifth in the indoor Big 12 track meet, and seventh at the outside event.

Last year, her sophomore year with the basketball team, Cizek played in fourteen games for the Cyclones.

However, she saw limited action, due partly to surgery on a broken finger Jan. 28, that sidelined her for nearly a month.

During the spring of 2000, Cizek decided she “owed it to myself” to give the high jump another try.

“Yeah,” Cizek said “I have a short attention span.”

After a spring of lifting weights and conditioning when she felt like it, Cizek spent the summer with teammate Megan Taylor.

“She has a phenomenal work ethic,” Cizek said of Taylor.

Three times a week Cizek and Taylor would lift. Twice a week, they would run 2-3 miles.

The duo even took their training so far as to spend a boring Saturday night in the rec, getting in a late night workout, Cizek said.

Cizek hopes this is the year her hand work is rewarded. Regardless of whether it is or not, her parents will once more see her through the season.

Marc and Bonnie Cizek seem to have “always” been at Kelly’s games, she said. Last year, “I hardly played and they’d still come.”

If last Saturday was any indication, the Cizek’s may want to get use seeing Kelly on the court.