When Missy Buttry comes home for summer vacation, she'll still be running around.

Buttry, a sophomore student-athlete at Wartburg College and the owner of seven national championships in Division III, is also one of 12 children -- nine of them adopted and younger than her. That means there are an awful lot of little feet zipping around the Buttry household in the small town of Shenandoah, Iowa. If Buttry has anything to do with it, at least some of them are going to end up loving running as much as she does.

They're already part of "Team Buttry," which Buttry credits with getting her involved in running at the young age of 6. Buttry joined other members of her family in road races and Junior Olympic meets, growing to love the feel of wind in her hair.

Buttry also is a devout Christian who has been home-schooled since fourth grade. When it came time to run competitively in high school, she dual-enrolled in Shenandoah High School, where she's still remembered for her cross country debut.

Only a ninth grader, Buttry lined up for the start of her first cross country race and took off ahead of the pack. Having never raced in a cross country race before, she took a wrong turn and everyone else followed.

"I ended up leading all the runners in the wrong direction on the course and cutting off a half mile," she said.

Now Buttry is leading all the runners in Division III and she's still the young one, having just completed her sophomore year. Her accomplishments are almost as eye-popping as the Buttry grocery bill.

She won both the 1,500-meter run and the 5,000-meter run at last month's Division III Women's Outdoor Track and Field Championships -- breaking meet records in both. In March at the Division III Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships, she ran a come-from-behind anchor leg to lift Wartburg's distance medley relay team to the national championship, setting another meet record. Then she won her second national title of the meet with a victory in the 1,500-meter run. Last fall, she beat a field of Division III's top 215 runners by almost a minute to win the Division III women's cross country title. As a freshman the previous year, Buttry also won the 1,500-meter run in both the indoor and the outdoor.

Right now she's one of the five fastest college women in the 5,000-meter run -- in all three divisions.

Buttry hasn't decided on a major yet, but she's leaning toward social work. She's also planning to run as far and as fast as she can.

"My biggest goal is to go to the Olympics someday," she said.

It might take a miracle, but that's OK with Buttry.

"Religion is a big thing for me," she said. "God's my biggest influence, and he's the reason I'm running.