It is hard to finish in the top half of the conference when a team is not totally healthy.

While battling injury and illness, as well as a course that was a little bit sloppy, the ISU women’s cross country team finished ninth for the second straight year at the Big 12 Championships with 247 points.

Colorado won the meet with tremendous balance, scoring 45 points with four top 10 finishers. Colorado has won 10 of the last 11 Big 12 women’s team titles.

Sally Kipyego from Texas Tech dominated the individual race, winning in 20:00.82, nearly 45 seconds ahead of her next closest competitor.

Coach Dick Lee said his team was a little disappointed with its finish in the team race.

“We had a couple of kids that got caught up and didn’t get out as smoothly as they could have, and a couple of kids sick, so that hurt us team-wise,” Lee said. “There is a lot of balance between those sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th spots as well.”

Sophomore Lisa Koll was the top finisher for the Cyclones, finishing seventh in the 6K race in 21:22.88. Koll improved 20 places from her 27th-place finish as a freshman to reach the top 10. Freshman Kelsey Bulat was next for the Cyclones with a time of 22:33.60, good for 35th place.

Lee said the two ran great races.

“Her finishing seventh in that field was a great effort on her part,” Lee said.

“Kelsey ran well for a freshman in her first Big 12 Championship, and she didn’t feel on top of her game that day, so she felt like she could have run better.”

The other Cyclones that figured into the team scoring were: senior Meredith McKean, who finished 56th (23:13.27), redshirt freshman Dana Peters, who finished 83rd (24:22.37), and junior Mackenzie Madison, who finished 84th (24:32.11).

Lee said the team would have had to run an incredible race to move up a couple of team spots.

“We had a couple of kids coming off of illnesses and a couple of kids banged up a little bit,” Lee said. “We ran solid and finished ninth, and we’re happy we didn’t finish below that.”

The other two Cyclones that ran were junior Dawn Caffrey and sophomore Erin Penticoff, who finished 90th and 94th, respectively.

The Cyclones will take a week off before attempting to qualify for nationals at the NCAA regionals in Minneapolis on Nov. 20.

“Hopefully we will be a little healthier next week,” Lee said.