Counting down the top 10 moments of the 2023-24 school year for Simpson College with #7.
It was a banner season for Simpson women’s track athlete Lara Kallem.

Kallem broke four different distance records between her final indoor and outdoor track seasons at Simpson. Coming off her first national appearance in cross country, Kallem opened her indoor campaign by breaking a 1990 school record in the indoor 3000-meter run (10:09.91). She followed that performance with a dominating effort in the 5000 meters that beat the previous record set in 2006 by 30 seconds (17:21.24). She took even more time off that mark at the A-R-C Indoor Championships a few weeks later, clocking a time of 17:12.71. Her indoor season concluded with a 19th place finish in the 5000 meters at the NCAA Championships.

Kallem immediately impressed outdoors as well, breaking her own school record in the 5000 meters in her first outing. She ran a 16:57.88 in the race, becoming the first Storm runner to break the 17-minute barrier in the event. Just over a week later, Kallem smashed the 10,000-meter run previously set in 2006 by over two minutes. Her time of 35:10.24 earned a spot at the national meet, where she recorded another top 20 finish.

Associate Head Coach James Hoffman said Kallem is part of a growing tradition of national excellence for the Storm program.

“That’s one of our core values, believing and having confidence in yourself and your teammates. Just raising the awareness of our program, raising the awareness with our future recruits that we are bringing in, that we can be and have been a program that has made noise in the conference which is one of the toughest in the country and we have been a program that has competed at the national level pretty well.”

Kallem will return for her senior season next year.

*from Simpsonathletics.com