It’s hard enough to bounce back from failure. But to bounce back and be crowned Big Ten champion? Iowa women’s track and field hurdler Myreanna Bebe is familiar with that.

At last year’s Big Ten Indoor Championships, Bebe qualified for the women’s 60-meter hurdles final with a fifth-place 8.31 in the prelims. In the finals, she tripped on the last hurdle and finished last with a time of 9.37.

This year, Bebe became Iowa’s first women’s 60-meter hurdles Big Ten champion, winning the final with a school-record 8.07 and earning first-team All-Big Ten honors.

“I was picking her up in tears of disappointment last year, and then this year I’m picking her up in tears of joy,” Iowa director of track and field Joey Woody said. “To go from one year later from where she was last year, I think that’s a great story … This isn’t the end of the story. This is just the beginning of where I think she can go.”

🥇8.07! See you at 𝗡𝗖𝗔𝗔 𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗢𝗢𝗥 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗣𝗦.#Hawkeyes x #B1GTF pic.twitter.com/O2oSZx5qHq

— Iowa Track & Field/Cross Country (@IowaXC_TF) February 27, 2023

Now, Bebe is one of five Hawkeye student-athletes who will travel to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships on March 10-11.

She has some experience there, having run the 60-meter hurdles at the New Mexico Collegiate Classic with the Hawkeyes on Feb. 4. At the meet, she finished 13th with an 8.31-second time and failed to qualify for the finals. But, as she looks back on the season, she’s grateful even for the bad days.

“I’ve learned that I have a lot of resilience; I’m very persistent,” Bebe said. “I find a lesson in everything, and I see the brighter picture in everything. I feel like that’s what keeps me going because I’m always able to take something [away] whether it’s good or negative.”

But Bebe feels winning the 60-meter hurdle title wasn’t the best achievement of her season — one that included breaking the event record at Iowa for the first time at the Larry Wieczorek Invitational on Jan. 21.

“I feel like I’ve been just enjoying the journey,” Bebe said. “I’ve been living in every moment, so even [though the] Big Ten [Indoor Championships] was a great thing, it was still a moment. Now I’m like, ‘OK, we have to live in the next moment.’ I’m just living.”

She said her approach going into NCAAs will be the same as every other meet this season.

“I’m going to go in there with confidence, knowing that I’m meant to be there and that I can do anything,” Bebe said. “I absolutely think it can get better … I just have to trust myself and trust my training and go out there living in the moment.”

Joining Bebe will be junior hurdler Grant Conway in the men’s 60-meter hurdles, junior multi-event athletes Peyton Haack and Austin West in the heptathlon, and senior jumper James Carter Jr. in the long jump and triple jump.

Carter, who prides himself on putting the Iowa jumpers on the map, finished second in the long jump and triple jump at the Big Ten Indoor Championships on Feb. 24-25, earning two second-team All-Big Ten honors.

RELATED: Multiple Hawkeyes earn all-conference honors at Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships

“We’re starting to get a larger name over the more recent years, but I feel like we compete with a chip on our shoulder because it seems that a lot of times we’ll get overlooked,” Carter said. “We just compete with a chip on our shoulder like we’ve really got something to prove.”

Carter leads by example, encouraging the joking and dancing by the tightknit Iowa jumpers. But he also knows to get to work when needed.

“We dance around and laugh and stuff, but I do try to make sure that I’m here and I’m being intentful with everything that I’m doing,” Carter said. “[I try to] always be that guy that people see every day, and people see that they’re working hard, and they know that they’re not taking days off and going 100 percent.”

Come the NCAA Indoor Championships, Carter will be all business.

“I know he’s got unfinished business at the national meet,” Woody said. “He hasn’t been first-team All-American yet, even though I know he’s got the tools to get it done. So that’s one of his big goals is to be a point scorer at the national meet and be a first-team All-American this next week.”