As the pages of the ISU women’s basketball record books are browsed in the coming years, Amanda Nisleit’s name will be hard to come by.

She won’t appear on any all-time list, never made the All-Conference team, was never named Big 12 Player of the Week, and led the Cyclones in scoring just four times in 117 career games. She won’t wow the crowd with flashy moves or explosiveness, and certainly doesn’t have a vertical jump worth bragging about.

But Amanda Nisleit has character. She has heart, intelligence and does all of the little things no other player wants to do as long as it means success for the rest of her team. Her work in a Cyclone uniform has gone largely unnoticed for the majority of the last four years, but the program will miss her dearly when practice starts up again next fall.

“Amanda Nisleit came in without a position,” said head coach Bill Fennelly on March 7 before senior night. “She was someone who you never thought, or never knew would play at all. But I think we’re going to be wishing we had her back. You wish you had 12 of them.”

Her jersey will likely never find its place in the rafters of Hilton Coliseum, but during her four years in Ames the native of Woodbury, Minn. quietly scored 629 points for the Cyclones in the process of becoming the gold standard for what it means to suit up in an ISU women’s basketball uniform.

In addition to her leadership on the court, her actions and efforts away from the basketball arena as a model student and citizen may be the greatest contribution she has made to the program and the university. She was twice named to the Academic All-Big 12 First Team, was on the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll five times, and made the ISU Dean’s List six times. This year she was named a Big 12 Community Champion for her work around the Ames community, and won the Cyclone Pride Award in 2007.

Throughout Fennelly’s tenure, it’s been players like Nisleit who have come to define the women’s basketball program at Iowa State.

He has never coached a first-team All-American in his 14 years with the Cyclones, but despite never recruiting the most high-profile players, Fennelly’s bunch is always a special group of players. They each possess a certain set of intangibles that, when put together, helps the program continue to grow and find success on the national scene.

Thanks to their tremendous fan base, which has done its part to recognize and support the rarity of this one-of-a-kind program, the Cyclones ranked third in the nation this season for average home attendance. The ISU faithful that have loyally followed the team for the past decade have come to appreciate the special things the women’s program has done despite not always landing the nation’s top recruits.

“If you look at programs like Tennessee and UConn, they’re doing major recruiting on a national scale,” said Norm Dostal, a long-time Cyclone fan and 1968 graduate of Iowa State. “But Bill Fennelly seems to be able to select people that other programs overlook — Amanda Nisleit and Heather Ezell being prime examples — and build his program around them. These are not the greatest athletes, but he has the ability to inspire them to perform at their highest ability. And that’s one of the things that makes the success of this program so unique.”

But the program hasn’t always been associated with this kind of philosophy. In fact, there was hardly anything positive associated with the ISU women’s program before the Fennelly era began. Prior to his arrival in 1995, the Cyclones had managed to put together just five winning seasons in the first 18 years of the program and never made a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

After everything Fennelly has accomplished for the program during his tenure, the fans, along with his players, have become well aware of his importance to the program. Through 14 seasons at the helm, he has transformed Iowa State into consistent winner, amassing 13 winning seasons and 10 NCAA Tournament appearances.

“Credit has to go to coach Fennelly and the rest of the coaching staff,” said junior guard Alison Lacey after Iowa State’s Elite Eight loss to Stanford. “We’re not the most athletic team and we’re not great at anything in particular, but [the coaches] make good scouting reports, we try to do things the right way, and we play defense as hard as we can. And we’re here right now because of it.”

With Nisleit now on her way out the door, Iowa State loses one of the conference’s best offensive rebounders and a player who took too many offensive charges to keep track of. Now it’s up to the remaining underclassmen to replace one of the school’s most influential players of the last four seasons. They’re big shoes to fill, but the recent history of the ISU women’s basketball program says the next Amanda Nisleit will step up in no time.