When Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard hired Martin Smith to take over the cross-country and track and field programs at Iowa State in the summer of 2013, he established the foundation for a strong distance program.

Pollard’s thinking was distance first and then fill in around that with areas the team thinks it can be good in based on who the assistant coaches are in track and field.

This ideology comes from the success of former head track and field and cross-country coach Bill Bergan, who led the Cyclones to two NCAA titles and 25 conference championships in cross-country and track and field in his 23 years at Iowa State.

“I believe that based on our history with [Bergan], that our distance side is where we really needed to be good in because we can be good in cross, and then if you were good enough, you could score nationally in indoor and outdoor track,” Pollard said last September.

Under Smith’s direction for the fourth straight year, the Iowa State women’s track and field team remains distance heavy, but the team is starting to add more depth to the sprint and field event areas, which have been lacking in size in recent years.

The current roster lists 17 middle-distance and distance runners. The remaining 15 women are either sprinters, hurdlers or field athletes.

Newcomers add depth 

This year’s roster also features 15 newcomers, including a large batch of athletes who will make their Iowa State debuts in the team’s season opener at the Hawkeye Invite on Friday and Saturday in Iowa City.

Two of those newcomers, freshman sprinter/jumper Carsyn Spurgeon and junior thrower Christabel Okeke, are focused on just getting through their first meet as Cyclones.

“This weekend’s going to be very challenging for me because I don’t know what to expect honestly,” Okeke said. “I just want to be the best I can be. That’s all I can hope for.”

Okeke, who spent the past two seasons at Coffeyville Community College in Kansas, brings a strong résumé competing as a thrower. She qualified for the NJCAA National Championships in both indoor and outdoor track during her sophomore season.

Spurgeon, on the other hand, has no post-high school experience competing in track and field and tried out the long jump, one of the events she will compete in at the Hawkeye Invite, for the first time about a year and a half ago.

Like Okeke, Spurgeon has a chance to make an immediate impact on the team this indoor season after winning 15 class 4A state titles at Vinita High School in Oklahoma. She also was a two-time Gatorade Athlete of the Year and recorded the fifth-longest long jump mark by a high school athlete in 2016.

While she’s a multi-event athlete, Spurgeon said her favorite event has become the long jump.

“I originally was just doing it as part of the heptathlon and we didn’t spend an extreme amount of time on it,” Spurgeon said. “Once I jumped in the heptathlon for the first time I figured out that I really loved it and I wasn’t too bad at it. So then we put a little more emphasis on it.”

A new season’s resolution 

One of the leaders in middle-distance events for the Cyclones in the 2016 indoor and outdoor track and field season, sophomore Jasmine Staebler enters the 2017 indoor season looking to carry over and build upon the success she experienced as a freshman. 

The Guttenberg, Iowa, native finished in the top five in the 800-meter run at the Big 12 Championships in both indoor and outdoor track last year. She also qualified for the NCAA West Preliminaries in the event during the outdoor season. 

Staebler spent the fall building endurance and strength during the cross-country season but still couldn’t shake off a problem that has stuck with her throughout her entire Iowa State career.

“Last year I got spiked once and lost my shoe once on the track, and then this fall in cross-country, my shoe kind of came off again,” Staebler said. “I just keep getting stepped on. So hopefully I don’t have anymore of that this year.”

Short season

Iowa State will start its outdoor season in two months, meaning athletes will have less than seven weeks to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championship on March 10 and 11 in College Station, Texas. 

The indoor season will begin at the Hawkeye Invite on Friday in Iowa City and run through Saturday. The Cyclones will be back in Iowa City again on Jan. 20 and 21 for the Larry Wieczorek Invite. 

Iowa State will host two meets at Lied Recreation Athletic Center, the Iowa State Classic on Feb. 10 and 11 and the Big 12 Indoor Championships on Feb. 24 and 25. 

The team will have three other away meets — the PSU National Open on Jan. 27 and 28 in University Park, Pennsylvania; the Husker Invitational on Feb. 3 and 4 in Lincoln, Nebraska; and the UCS Invitational on Feb. 18 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.