North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State Cross Country Dominates ACC Championships
10/28/2006 12:00:00 AM | Cross Country
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va . – NC State put to rest any and all doubts about its domination of cross country in the Atlantic Coast Conference by sweeping both the men’s and women’s championships at Saturday’s ACC Cross Country Championships.
The Wolfpack men won the conference championship for the 10th time in 12 years, while the women’s domination dates back even further. The 2006 ACC championship is the women’s 21st in the last 29 years.
In addition to taking both team titles for the first time since 2002, NC State senior Julia Lucas won the individual women’s championship by a whopping 15 seconds over Wake Forest’s Michelle Sikes. Bona Jones finished fourth overall to take 2006 Freshman of the Year honors. NC State last won the individual and team championships on the women’s side in 1993.
The championships were held at the Panorama Farms near Charlottesville, and the course featured challenging succession of steep hills and deep valleys, with only occasional patches of flat ground. The finish line came at the end of a lengthy stretch of uphill terrain.
“That last hill was horrible,” Lucas said. “You didn’t just want to slow down. You wanted to stop and take a nap.”
The difficulty of the course made the sweep all the more enjoyable for NC State, which swept both races for the ninth time since 1991. The Wolfpack is the only ACC team ever to win both championships in the same year.
The NC State women, ranked No. 2 nationally, ran 1-4-9-13-32 for a team score of 59 points. Second-place Duke, which won the team championship the last two years, came in at 3-7-22-26-30 for a score of 88. Virginia came in third with 104 points (5-8-10-28-53). The Wolfpack women placed four members on the all-conference team.
The NC State men, ranked No. 9 nationally, completely dominated the men’s race with a team score of 31. The Wolfpack men ran 4-5-6-7-9, and placed all eight runners in the top 19 at the race. Six Wolfpack runners made the All-ACC team.
Clemson’s Itay Magidi won the individual championship for the men, followed by Andrew Lemoncello of Florida State and Jan Foerster of Virginia. It was all Wolfpack after that. Eight of the next 16 runners to cross the finish line were wearing NC State uniforms. Junior Wes Smith was fourth overall at 24:03.3, with juniors Tibor Vegh fifth (24:23.8), John Crews sixth (24:26.1) and Stephen Furst seventh (24:30.8), and sophomore Gavin Coombs ninth (24:36.2). Senior Bryce Ruiz was 13th at 24:42.2. Smith, Vegh, Crews, Furst, Coombs and Ruiz all earned All-ACC honors by finishing in the top 14. Juniors Chris Kollar (25:00.8) and Fredy Torres (25:01.7) came in 18th and 19th, respectively.
The win was a breakthrough of sorts for NC State, which did not place a runner in the top 10 at either the Notre Dame Invitational or the NCAA Pre-Nationals.
“We’ve talked for a while about running as a group, and we’ve done that all year,” Wolfpack head coach Rollie Geiger said. “This last two weeks, we’ve talked about running as a group up front, and today we did that. And that was the difference today.”
The other difference was the emergence this season of several runners into front-line, national-caliber runners. Geiger took some heat in 2005 when he redshirted his three top returning runners from 2004 – Smith, Coombs and Bobby Mack. Not having those three no doubt made a difference in 2005, when the Wolfpack slipped to third in the conference and did not win the conference championship for only the second time in 11 years.
The biggest difference in this year’s championship team, however, has the performance of the runners who did not redshirt in ’05 -- Vegh, Crews, Furst, Ruiz, Kollar and Torres.
“Last year, our top runner in this race came in 13th,” Geiger said. “This year, our sixth runner was 13th, and our eighth runner was 19th. And the players are pretty much the same. Wes and Gavin are back, and they ran great and made a difference. But you take the improvement that other group has made and then put Wes and Gavin back in there, that’s what makes this a championship team. This is such a great group.”
Geiger also was thrilled with the sweep. He stopped coaching the women three years ago, turning those duties over to associate head coach Laurie Henes. With both teams winning, NC State has now swept the men’s and women’s championships nine times in the last 16 years.
“For the women to win Laurie’s first championship,” Geiger said, “and for Julia to win the individual championship and for Bona to win Freshman of the Year, it’s just a great day for NC State cross country.”
For much of the women’s race, Lucas was part of a tight group of about 15 runners at the front of the pack, a group that also included Sikes, Jones and Wolfpack sophomore Brittany Tinsley, whi finished ninth overall. About two-thirds of the way through the 6k course, Lucas began to pull away from the rest of the field.
“There was a small stretch of flat ground, so I tried some distance between myself and Michelle,” Lucas said. “She’s a really good runner, and I knew that I had to pick the right spot. I just tried to pull away a little at a time.”
Lucas never looked back, finishing in a time of 20:42.1 to Sikes’s 20:57.1. Jones came across at 21.12.7, and not only beat the rest of the freshmen in the field, but all of the sophomores and juniors as well. Tinsley was ninth at 21:26.0, and sophomore Angelina Blackmon was 13th at 21:38.4. Lucas, Jones, Tinsley and Blackmon were All-ACC by virtue of finishing in the top 14.
The gap between the Wolfpack’s fourth and fifth runners was nearly a minute, but junior Ann Wheatley finished 32nd in a time of 22:28.9 to put the finishing touches in the Wolfpack’s victory.
“It’s been a long time since we won both the team championship and the individual championship outright, and we got Freshman of the Year too, so it was a really good day,” associate head coach Laurie Henes said. “It was great to see Julia finally win the individual championship. Michelle Sikes is a really outstanding runner, and Julia won easily. She beat a really competitive individual field.”
The championship for the women came two weeks after an easy win in the White Race at the NCAA Pre-Nationals at Terre Haute, Ind.. Lucas won than individual race as well, and appears to be leading the Wolfpack into postseason form. Next up will be the NCAA Regionals on Nov. 11, and the NCAA Championships on Nov. 20.
“We had never run this course,” Lucas said. “But all of our conditioning all year, all the runs we made to this point, were with this race in mind. The coaches had us ready for this. It speaks well of how well we’re running as a group right now.
“The feeling heading into Pre-Nationals was to run a good race. We didn’t really put any emphasis on winning. Our intention heading into this race was to win. Running with the NC State logo on our chests means something to us. We’re well aware how long it’s been since we’ve won the ACC, and we really felt an obligation to run to the best of our abilities.”
NC State's Men's ACC Titles
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NC Srate's Women's ACC Championships
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