NC State women's cross country repeats as NCAA champions
After the NC State men’s basketball team won the national title in 1983, Wolfpack athletics had to wait 38 years until another team championship. Last fall, NC State women’s cross country broke through, winning the first NCAA team title for a women’s program at the school.
The same NC State women’s cross country team made sure there would not be another long drought. The Wolfpack repeated as national champions Saturday morning behind the strong 1-2 punch of junior Katelyn Tuohy and senior Kelsey Chmiel.
Tuohy also took home the individual title by setting a course record at the Greiner Family OSU Cross Country Course in Stillwater, Okla., with a time of 19:27.7 for the 6K. Tuohy had to run down Florida star Parker Valby, who sprinted out to a lead that at one point reached nearly 12 seconds on the field. Both runners were undefeated for the cross country season entering the race.
“We talked about beforehand that she’d run out fast from the gun, so I stayed back and went with the pack to catch her,” Tuohy told ESPN in her post race interview. “Then when she went to that 3K, the gap was a little bigger than I like so I made the choice to catch up and just started to try to time myself from there.
“The goal was to catch her before the turn up the hill, and that’s right around when I caught her and powered on the downhill to the finish.”
Valby held on for second, but sprinting behind her to separate from the rest of the field while closing that gap to the runner-up was Chmiel for NC State, who took third place.
“A lot of people stepped up. They were great at front,” NC State women’s cross country head coach Laurie Henes said in her televised post-race interview.
Tuohy admitted to both excitement and nervousness after crossing first.
“I was really tired, but I got a second wind to see them come in,” Tuohy noted. “We were trying to count, and we couldn’t find our fifth girl, so we didn’t know where we were at.”
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NC State and Alabama had been trading narrow leads in the team standings throughout the race. Alabama had a strong first four runners, all of whom finished in the top 14 for individual team points.
Wolfpack senior Sam Bush repeated as an All-American by placing 15th. Two runners ahead of her ran individually and not for teams competing, which meant Bush scored 13th in team points. Senior Nevada Mareno crossed 29th and was 24th in team points.
New Mexico ran a tightly packed group that all finished between 20th and 34th in team points. The question was could NC State get a fifth runner across the line in time to get the repeat national title. Freshman Brooke Rauber made sure that would happen with a late kick, moving up 17 spots in the final kilometer to get the 74th-most team points.
Meanwhile, Alabama’s final runner finished well behind Rauber, giving NC State separation from the Tide.
In the final team standings, NC State women’s cross country had 114 points, while New Mexico finished second at 140 and Alabama slipped late to third at 166.
The last team to repeat as national champions in women’s cross country was Villanova in 2009 and 2010. NC State became the first to have both an individual and team title since Colorado in 2018.
