NC State athletics added two more NCAA championships to its bulging trophy case last weekend, as the women’s cross-country team and women’s tennis partners Gabriella Broadfoot and Victoria Osuigwe won national titles in their respective sports.
On Saturday in Columbia, Missouri, the top-ranked harriers won their fourth NCAA title in the last five years, an era of dominance by head coach Laurie Henes’ program that is unmatched by any other in Wolfpack history. In addition to those four NCAA titles, women’s cross-country also won back-to-back Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women titles in 1979-80, which was the governing body for women’s athletics at the time.
On Sunday in Orlando, Florida, junior Broadfoot and freshman Osuigwe became the second doubles tandem in school history to win an NCAA title, following in the footsteps of Jaeda Daniel and Nell Miller, who won the program’s inaugural doubles title in 2022. The Broadfoot/Osuigwe combo, ranked No. 10 in the country prior to the championships, beat Vanderbilt’s No. 12 ranked duo Sophia Webster and Celia-Belle Mohr 7-5, 6-4.
In cross-country, senior Hannah Gapes finished fifth (18:51.5), followed by senior Grace Hartman (18:52.6) at sixth, to lead the Wolfpack’s five scorers in the 6K race. Sophomore Bethany Michalak finished 28th, junior Angelina Napoleon was 40th and freshman Sadie Engelhardt was 51st to complete the Wolfpack’s scoring. All five runners earned All-America honors, as State’s 114 team points edged out defending champion Brigham Young (130) and third-place Oregon (153) for the team title.
Gapes, a native of New Zealand, and Ohio-born Hartman were both recruited as Henes assembled her first national championship team in 2021 and both ran at the 2023 NCAA event in Charlottesville, Virginia, though neither was among the top scorers in the race. Hartman was fifth and Gapes was eighth in last year’s race.
“What is good about this year’s group was that they were pretty much the first class of recruits after we won our first national championship,” Henes said. “When you win a title, you hope you are able to attract similar talent.
“Grace and Hannah were here for that, and the runners that followed have put us in position to be in the same place we were in 2021 and ’22. I think it is really cool that we are able to recruit to sustain our success.”
Saturday’s weather was rainy and muddy, but the Pack survived without falls or much adverse effect to win a title in its fourth unique location. Henes and her team won the first of three consecutive titles in Tallahassee, Florida, followed by Stillwater, Oklahoma and Charlottesville. Last year’s team finished eighth in Madison, Wisconsin.
In addition to the cross-country and tennis doubles titles, the Wolfpack had success this year when freshman wrestler Vincent Robinson won an individual NCAA championship in the 125-pound division, marking the third time in school history that State has won national titles in three different sports in the same calendar year.
The dual national titles highlighted a big weekend for Wolfpack athletics, with the men’s soccer program advancing to the NCAA Championships Sweet Sixteen after a 2-0 win over Marshall on Saturday and the Wolfpack football team recording its fourth consecutive victory over Florida State on Friday at Carter-Finley Stadium.
The Pack soccer team plays UNC Greensboro on Sunday at the Dail Soccer Field for the right to advance to the Elite Eight for the first time since it went three consecutive years from 1990 to 1992.
