Iowa talking about Gymnastics:
The two schools meet twice a year, with each dual counted, and
ISU had won seven times in a row until Iowa won March 7.
"To have that win, really and truly means the world," Iowa women's gymnastics coach Larissa Libby said. "It's the state rivalry, and they have some kind of ridiculous record against us."
Libby, in her fourth season, said that her coaching staff needed to get that win to prove they are making progress.
"As a staff, we kind of focused our program on that," Libby said. "You have to be the best in the state to be the best in the conference, to be the best in the country. If you can't start at the state level, you're going to be in trouble.
I think this sums up the way
ISU has gone about the series.
ISU football had been so bad for so long that beating a team year after year who had been historically better is a way to get the program off the ground. It is a building block and it has to start somewhere.
ISU had some success against Iowa, and then started building towards better conference results. The next step is to win a north championship, which it had come dangerously close to on more than one occasion.
Iowa State is building itself up at a more efficient manner than Iowa. To build a program, it starts with wins....and like Iowa's gymnastics coach says, "If you can't start at the state level, you're going to be in trouble." Now that Iowa State knows they can beat Iowa, confidence is stronger about beating the conference foes. We'll see how it turns out, but I Iowa State is in a better place than it was when McCarney took over a winless program. That better place started by beating Iowa.
