NC State has the nation’s top cross country team

The NC State women’s cross country team has an incredible tradition of success, and it’s one that tends to get buried just because it won a couple of titles right before the NCAA became the official arbiter of college sports.

(It also tends to get buried because the athletics department does a shit job of even doing a basic acknowledgement of those titles. The Wolfpack won national championships in women’s cross country in both 1979 and 1980, though good luck finding anything about this, well, anywhere. Not even NC State bothers to highlight these accomplishments, which you gotta dig to find. )

Sorry, that was a big parenthetical. Anyway, this team finished last season second nationally to BYU, and that was a result in doubt pretty well near the end, Every single major contributor on that team—which was led by first-year runners—returned. NC State has a legitimate contender—not simply a good team, but an elite one, and no one is talking about it. That’ll probably change soon