One final opportunity to show improvement in a meet setting before the Big 12 Outdoor Championships remains for the ISU women’s track and field team. 

This year’s Drake Relays event arrives following a successful nine-meet start to the season, in which the Cyclones have regularly set personal-best and season-best marks.

Despite opening the season with six event wins at the Tulsa Duals on March 19, the team has come a long way in just over a month.

Two weeks into the season, redshirt sophomore Erin Hooker ran a nearly 90-second personal record in the 10,000-meter run at the Stanford Invitational on April 1, while her teammates Maryn Lowry, Jasmine Staebler, Maddie Nagle and Erinn Stenman-Fahey clocked personal-best times in the 1,500-meter run.

“I had a good 1,500 out in San Francisco that I was happy about,” Stenman-Fahey said. “My 800 out there didn’t go super great, but these last few races [at the Jim Duncan Invitational and Virginia Challenge], I feel like I’ve really started to figure out the 800 a bit better now, and I’m getting a lot more confident and comfortable with it, so I think things are really starting to come together.”

A week after the meets in California, freshman Emma Whigham posted the fourth highest heptathlon score — 5,019 — in ISU history, and senior Kaci Storm improved her previous best heptathlon score by more than 600 points, finishing with a 4,238 score at the Jim Click Shootout.  

The Cyclones added five more personal-best marks in a trio of meets last weekend. 

Staebler recorded the ninth fastest time in ISU history in the 800-meter run at Virginia Challenge on Friday. Her teammate, Stenman-Fahey, improved in the 800-meter run for the third time since the Tulsa Duals and set her season-best mark in the event.

“Mentally, I’ve been a lot better about the [800-meter run],” Stenman-Fahey said. “I’ve been having good workouts, which have really boost my confidence. It was frustrating [at the beginning of the season] because I was putting in all the work and having good workouts, but not getting the results I wanted in races. So it’s really motivating now to see things finally coming together.” 

Distance runners Evelyne Guay and Perez Rotich set personal records in the 1,500-meter run and 5,000-meter run, respectively, the next day at the Virginia Challenge. 

Guay has only competed in two meets this season after missing the first part of it because she was sick. 

“I’ve been improving upon from the first race to the next and feeling better about my training,” Guay said. “I’m really excited to see what these future races can bring because I’ve been in a place fitness-wise I’ve never been before, so I think it’s just about getting the right race situation to be able to test that fitness.”

Guay said she’s running more miles, doing harder workouts and putting in more work than she has ever before. 

Freshman Grace Gibbons and sophomore Jhoanmy Luque set the other two personal-best marks for the Cyclones in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Musco Twilight and triple jump at the LSU Alumni Gold meet, respectively. 

The focus will now shift to the Drake Relays, a meet that has been generating some buzz among ISU athletes.

“Drake will be fun,” Guay said. “I am pretty excited for it because the atmosphere is just so unique compared to other races with all the fans. Track and field doesn’t have the most spectators of sports out there, but to see the support the Iowans have for the Drake Relays is crazy, and especially because we’re an Iowa school, they go crazy and it’s just really fun, a good atmosphere.”

Whigham and Storm will open up competition for Iowa State in the heptathlon Wednesday.