Senior Lisa Koll is all too familiar with being at the front of the pack.

That’s exactly where she found herself at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships on March 13 and 14, as she paced the field to capture the NCAA title in the 5,000-meter run.

The senior distance runner from Fort Dodge put the field well in the rearview mirror, winning by nearly 11 seconds over second-place finisher Marie-Louise Asselin of West Virginia. Koll’s time of 15:39.65 was not even her quickest of the season, but proved to the rest of the NCAA field that even when she’s not at her best, she can win a tight race.

The 5,000 championship was Koll’s second of her career, and she still had another opportunity to accomplish an individual title in the 3,000-meter run. Koll had the quickest times in the nation in both the 3,000- and 5,000-meter runs and after delivering on the expectations for the 5,000, she was a clear favorite to win the 3,000. Koll’s coach, Corey Ihmels, saw her last opportunity to run indoor track as a Cyclone at the NCAA Championships as a result of her hard work all season long.

“Lisa has worked really hard to get to this point and have the opportunity to run at nationals,” Ihmels said. “We hope she gets out there and does what she’s capable of doing.”

In Saturday’s 3,000-meter run, she started out doing exactly that. Koll was able to stay ahead of the field for the first 13 laps of the race, but was unable to edge everyone out at the very end.

Angela Bizarri of Illinois was able to run down Koll and hold off a rally from Koll on the final stretch of the race to beat out Iowa State’s nine-time All-American for the title by just a short .12 seconds.

Bizarri, a NCAA Cross-Country Champion in the 5,000-meter run, brought home first place with a time of 8:57.40, becoming part of an elite group of runners to win an NCAA Championship in both indoor and outdoor track seasons, as well as in cross-country. Koll’s second-place finish in the 3,000 is the first time this season that she has competed in a race and not emerged as the winner. Despite losing her unblemished personal record, Koll’s outstanding performances at the NCAA Championships gave Iowa State a 10th place finish in the team standings. This was Iowa State’s first ever top 10 finish at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.

The men’s and women’s track and field teams now have the outdoor track season facing them as the first meets will take place Friday and Saturday. The Cyclones will be split up to begin the outdoor season with partial squads traveling to Arlington, Texas, for the UT Arlington Invitational and another division of the teams going to compete in the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif.