While the average college student was relaxing and catching some sun over Spring Break, three members of the ISU women’s track team were competing for a national championship at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships hosted by the University of Arkansas.

Rebecca Williams, Agata Kosuda and Lisa Koll represented the Cyclones at the meet and got a taste of the best indoor competition in the nation.

Coach Dick Lee felt the Cyclones had a strong meet and were very close to getting over the hump to having an outstanding meet.

“We were very close to having a lot of really good things happen,” Lee said “We had a good national meet but just couldn’t get over the edge of having a real good meet.

Williams is no stranger to championship competition, but the senior did not have the type of meet she was hoping for. The Big 12 champion ran her 60-meter hurdle prelim event in 8.33 seconds, missing out on the finals for the first time all season. Williams, the faster hurdler in ISU history, finished 14th overall.

“I was thinking too hard on the race and may have lost a little concentration because of that,” Williams said.

Still, Williams said the meet was a good experience and a race that was essential in order to carry momentum into the outdoor season, a season she feels she is stronger in.

“It was a good experience,” Williams said. “It was a race I needed to be in and it prepared me a lot for outdoor season because we have a lot of big meets coming up.”

Williams’ coach, Scott Roberts, said that it’s hard to maintain momentum coming off such highs as winning the Big 12 Championship and it becomes very difficult for a runner not to come out a little flat. In a meet where the competition is as strong as it can get, one misstep can cost a runner dearly.

“The top 16 runners in the country are there out of some 280 Division I schools – it is an unbelievable amount of competition,” Roberts said. “One misstep can be the whole difference in the race, especially in only 60 meters, we had a little bit of a misstep on the third hurdle and that’s all it took.”

Also getting her first opportunity to compete in the indoor nationals was Kosuda, who missed the triple jump finals by mere centimeters. Kosuda finished 10th overall, with a jump of 12.95 meters. The school record holder and former Big 12 outdoor champ missed out on All-American status by only two spots.

Representing the Cyclones on the distance side of things was Koll, a cross country All-American last fall. Koll, running in the 5,000-meter run – the longest event in indoor track, finished 12th with a time of 16 minutes and 18.84 seconds. Koll was the highest placing freshman in the field.

“It went out really fast, my first mile was in 5:04 minutes and I was still towards the back,” Koll said. “It was a lot faster than I was used to. If I had been more conservative things might have been different, but I stayed with the pack I should have been with I just fell off towards the end.”

Lee also thinks that Koll running her third 5,000m run in three weeks may have had an effect.

“Lisa ran a very good race, it’s tough to run three 5,000m races in a row,” Lee said. “She handled that very well and competed very well, but was just running a little low on fuel in the tank, it would have been easy for her to fall apart in her race, but that didn’t happen.”