Sam Bluske found herself in the middle of the pack of the 5000-meter run at the Big 12 Championship. Bethanie Brown, her freshman teammate and a cross-country All-American, was up in the front of the pack, battling with Olivia Mickle of the University of Texas.

As the race progressed, Brown would take the lead. Then a few laps later, Mickle would recover the lead. All the while, Bluske ran back in fifth place, just biding her time and staying relaxed.

The redshirt senior and team captain kept her sights on the leaders, watching as Brown and Mickle pushed the pace, just to make sure the head of the pack was always within her striking distance.

“With 800-meters to go, I realized that I felt really good … and I was like, ‘Heck, I have a chance to win this if I play it right,’” Bluske said. “With 600 [meters] to go, I had moved up to third and Coach [Andrea Grove-McDonough] was like screaming at me to make sure I had my move, and with 350 [meters to go], I knew I had enough, and I just put my head down and ran as hard as I could that last 350 meters.”

While Brown began to run out of gas and would ultimately finish in sixth place, Bluske only seemed to grow stronger. She tracked down Mickle and rode in her hip pocket for a while before out-kicking her down the final stretch.

“Coach [Grove-McDonough] has really made me realize I have the kick, which I never thought I had before,” Bluske said. “When I jogged to the line at the start she was like, ‘Hey, you have the kick,’ and I did.”

Bluske outlasted and out-kicked her way to a Big 12 Championship title in the 5000-meter race, the first of her career.

“She is such a great closer, so we had a lot of faith in that,” said Grove-McDonough. “I didn’t necessarily know she was going to win it, but that was some great icing on the cake. It took a 16-second personal record to do it, but what a great moment to do something like that.”

The way Bluske ran the race personified her time at Iowa State. While the headliners battled out in front for everybody to see, Bluske remained a steady, consistent presence in the middle of the pack, just waiting for her time. Just waiting to make her move.

Bluske is a team captain for the ISU women’s track and field team this season, a decision she said she never expected when she first arrived on campus as a transfer from Illinois State. However, Bluske would ultimately grow into a model athlete at Iowa State.

“Being a team captain is probably one of the most rewarding experiences I have had,” Bluske said. “If you look back at my last few years, honestly, I don’t think many people expected this to happen because on paper I was not the favorite at all.”

But then again, Bluske has never really been the favorite. She always seemed to be overshadowed. Bluske was always a steady background presence, but never the headliner.

Still, Bluske went to work every day, and this year, as a team captain, she began to see that work pay dividends.

At the Big 12 Championships, Bluske saw all of her work culminate into a Big 12 Championship title by doing what she has always done: putting her head down and going to work.

“I think showing the younger girls that if you go to practice working hard every single day and committing yourself, like no matter how many things go against you, as long as you keep believing in yourself and your teammates and your coaching, anything is possible,” Bluske said.

Katy Moen, a redshirt junior on the team, finished just behind Bluske and Mickle in third place. Moen said it was hard to put into words how much Bluske meant to the team as an athlete everybody looked up to during the season.

“I think it showed all of our hard work paying off, especially Sam who has worked so hard the past couple years, and it was finally her time to shine,” Moen said. “Sam is definitely a leader by example, a leader by compassion, and just taking us all under her wing. She has the captain title, but to us, it goes beyond that.”

Grove-McDonough, who helped Bluske realize she had the kick necessary to win a Big 12 Championship down the stretch, echoed Moen’s take on how valuable Bluske was to the team, not just as an athlete, but as a leader and a teammate.

“I actually think that almost everybody on the team, if they were asked who they would pick to win a championship at this meet, who it would mean the most to, I think everybody would have said Sam and everybody would have been the happiest for Sam,” Grove-McDonough said.

Suddenly, Bluske, the team captain and model athlete, had moved from the background to a headliner, not only on the team, but also in the Big 12 Conference.

Bluske has thrived as team captain, and it showed throughout the season. After leading her team this season, her teammates got to look up to her once again.

This time, they were looking up at Bluske standing on the top of the podium with a Big 12 Championship medal around her neck.

Still, Bluske deflected all of her individual attention and success back to her teammates, the university and the program that means everything to her.

“I’m just really happy to be able to represent Iowa State that way because the university and the program has given so much to me and so many opportunities, and to be able to do this for them … It’s not really for myself … it’s for my team, but it just means so much,” Bluske said.

Bluske’s time in the spotlight had just begun, and yet she was already focused on drifting back into the background.

Drifting back to the middle of the pack, where she bides her time, keeping herself in striking distance until she needs to make her move yet again.