Olympic Sports Spotlight: Bebe Breaks Record

Caitlin Clark. That's it. That's the intro.

If you're an Iowa fan, a basketball fan, a sports fan you owe it to yourself to watch Clark play. She's unlike any other college athlete in the country and she plays for the University of Iowa. She just put up a triple-double against the undefeated #2 team in the country, on the road. Find a way to watch Iowa women's hoops. Your life will be better for it.

I wasn't exactly going out on a limb last week when I predicted that the Hawkeyes would rewrite a whole bunch of the Iowa record books this season, but I certainly wasn't expecting it to happen so emphatically and so soon. The Hawkeyes hosted the Larry Wieczorek Invitational over the weekend, surpassing the high bar they set for themselves to start the year.

The women's team won the team title, led by a standout performance from junior Myreanna Bebe, who broke the school record in the 60m hurdles. Bebe beat the previous Hawkeye record of 8.21 by a full tenth of a second, running an 8.11 just a week after setting a new personal best of 8.22. Bebe's time is 6th best in the country this season and easily secured the win in the event. She wasn't the only big performance of the weekend though.

Lasarah Hargrove got the party started on Friday with a win in the women's 200m race, finishing in 23.79. Alli Bookin-Nosbisch ran the 4th fastest 800m time in school history with a 2:06.59 and Wisdom Williams won the women's shot put event with the 10th best throw in school history (49' 10").

The men's team put together a strong performance of their own, led by Khullen Jefferson's win in the 200m race (21.07). The group finished third in the team competition.

The Wieczorek is an interesting, but not wholly unusual, setup, with professional and collegiate athletes competing in the same events. It can cause strong performances to go a bit under the radar as some of these standout collegiate athletes go up against professional competition, but the Hawkeyes held their own throughout the weekend.

Bebe's performance in particular is a great sign for the rest of the season for the Hawks. Smashing your personal best and the school record by a tenth of a second so early in the season certainly implies there's even more room to improve moving forward. The athletes and coaches do everything they can to peak towards the end of the season so when you see these records fall early in the seeing, it should catch your eye. Coach Woody seemingly agreed, saying he wouldn't be shocked if Bebe broke 8.00 at some point during the season. I threw out a list of runners and field athletes last week whose names I expected to be writing a whole lot throughout the year. I'm not vain enough to think that Bebe saw the post and took her omission personally, but regardless, message received. There's another name to add to the list of record-breakers and that can only mean good things for the team going forward.

The #15 Iowa gymnastics team competed against #10 Ohio State over the weekend, and while they lost to the Buckeyes, they set yet another season-high team score. Jerquavia Henderson and Linda Zivat tied for the top spot on vault after each scoring 9.900s. The GymHawks have now improved their team score in each of their first three meets. It's a promising sign for a young team that has yet to host a home meet. They'll look to improve on their 196.900 score next Friday when they host Minnesota.

The Hawkeye women's swim and dive team hosted Vanderbilt over the weekend, with the two sides competing to a 131-131 draw. The Hawks won nine different events including the 200m medley relay, 400m freestyle relay, a podium sweep in the 1000m free, 50m and 200m freestyle wins from freshman Sabina Kupcova, 100m backstroke, 100m free, 200m backstroke, and 100m fly. Kennedy Gilbertson won races both as an individual and as part of the relay team, as did Scarlet Martin. They'll be in the pool again next weekend against Northwestern and Minnesota.