Storm Lake relay team runs 24th-fastest 800m mark in Iowa history

Storm Lake’s boys sprint medley relay turned in a time that pushed the program into rare Iowa territory, running 1:33.04 to finish eighth in the 800-meter event and climb to 24th on the state’s all-time list.

The mark came at the 2026 Iowa High School State Track and Field Meet, held May 21-23 at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, where the 800 sprint medley relay is one of the featured running finals. For Storm Lake, the result carried more weight than a single place on the medal stand. It showed a program in the middle of a sharp upward run in one of the sport’s most demanding relay events, where schools often battle roster size, training depth and the kind of speed needed to stay nationally relevant at the state level.

The relay’s new time now sits behind only a small slice of Iowa history. The state-meet record and all-time best in the event is 1:30.92, set by Bettendorf’s Austin Kalar, Carter Bell, Leo Desequeria and Darien Porter in 2019. That standard has stood since the 800 sprint medley was added as a state-meet event in 2017, making Storm Lake’s jump into the top 25 especially notable in a relatively young event.

Storm Lake’s rise did not happen all at once. On May 13, 2025, a different lineup of Brandyn Azurdia, Sitah Chaiyawong, Andre Machado and Garbieno Weno ran 1:36.02 at the Spencer Relays to set a new school record. Just two days before this year’s state meet, another Storm Lake quartet of Azurdia, Chaiyawong, David William and Weno clocked 1:33.45 for second place at a state qualifying meet and helped the team finish fifth in the standings with 88 points. The latest performance trimmed that standard again.

The climb matters in a state where track and field has deep roots. Iowa’s first boys’ state track meet was held in 1906, and the championship meet switched from yards to meters in 1978 when Drake University rebuilt its track. The Iowa High School Athletic Association keeps separate all-time best lists for metric and yardage marks, underscoring how unusual it is for a Storm Lake relay to break into the state’s modern metric history. For Buena Vista County, the question now is whether this kind of finish becomes a one-time breakthrough or the new baseline for a program that has already started to look faster than the rest of the field expected.