Iowa State’s Jasmine Staebler vying for second NCAA Championship berth

AMES - Andrea Grove-McDonough laid out the plan and Jasmine Staebler took it all in.

In Staebler's living room, Iowa State's track and field coaches laid out their vision for her future. By the end of her time in Ames, they said, she could be one of the best runners in the NCAA.

Less than two years into her collegiate career, Staebler is already seeing the fruits of that labor.

'I would say my training was taken to a whole other level when I got to Iowa State,” Staebler said. 'I didn't really do any high mileage in high school or anything.

'Once I got here I was doing about 50 miles a week freshman year. I think that just really helped me think of an 800 with an endurance-based approach.”

A key mixture of endurance and bursts of speed have made Staebler a versatile asset for the Cyclones, and she's trying to turn that into a berth to the NCAA Track and Field Championships this week. She'll run the 800-meter run at 8:10 p.m. Thursday at the NCAA West Preliminaries in Austin, Texas.

The former Clayton Ridge prep is more than just an endurance runner though. She does a little bit of everything. The nine-time Iowa high school state champion ran the 100-meter dash, cross country and everything in between growing up.

When she got to Iowa State, her focus intensified on mid-distances and her training played to her strengths. A few benchmark moments have Staebler vying for her second NCAA Championship race this season - she took sixth in the indoor 800-meter run (2:04.08) in March.

Just as important as her physical versatility is her demeanor.

'One of the great qualities that Jasmine has, and I always tell the other athletes to try to emulate that, I always say she never gets too high and never gets too low,” Grove-McDonough said. 'She just kind of handles things one step at a time and tends not to overthink it.”

After a freshman year that saw her go to the NCAA West Preliminaries in the 800-meter run, Staebler returned this winter with a taste of the possibilities. Her sixth-place finish at the NCAA indoor meet was another step in the right direction, but it also toyed with her plan for the upcoming outdoor season.

'It definitely took a good couple weeks after indoor nationals for me to get feeling like myself again,” Staebler said. 'I felt like I really had to work into it because I had to take some time off and I had to build it back up and get used to the faster paced workouts again. Then I feel like two or three weeks after that I started feeling better again and feeling like myself.”

A top-24 finish Thursday would put Staebler in the 800-meter run finals Friday, with the top-12 runners advancing to the championship in Eugene, Ore.

'We were able to build off what she did as a freshman and really didn't skip a beat,” Grove-McDonough said. 'Then you saw kind of the jump she had as a sophomore from her freshman year. It was nice jump from high school to freshman year so it's a really great trajectory and we're feeling really good about it.”

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