Since the NC State athletics calendar year is, regrettably, over, it’s a good time to reflect back on the year that was.

Here are The Wolfpacker's superlatives for the Wolfpack’s fall sports that consist of football, men’s and women’s cross country, volleyball, and men’s and women’s soccer.

Women’s soccer deserves a mention for reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Championships for the third time in four years. However, the nod belongs to women’s cross country.

Led by star senior Elly Henes, NC State swept both the ACC Championship and the NCAA Southeast Regional to advance to the NCAA Championship. Henes won the ACC title and promising freshman Kelsey Chmiel came in fourth. Henes was NC State’s first individual ACC champ in the sport since Laura Hoer in 2010.

Henes crushed the field at the Southeast Regional by over six seconds, while Chmiel was the top freshman runner there and once again came in fourth. Junior Julia Zachgo rounded out NC State’s trio of top-10 finishers with a sixth-place performance. Henes became just the third Wolfpack female runner ever to win a regional.

Then at the NCAA Championship, NC State came in fifth place overall, and Henes finished in 10th. Chmiel was the second-fastest freshman there and crossed the line in 22nd. Both earned All-America honors with their performances, and for Henes that was her third such honor.

For the Pack, it marked its third top-5 finish nationally in the past five NCAA meets.

The most exciting part for the women’s cross country program is its future. It does lose a star in Henes, but she was one of just two seniors on the roster. NC State also welcomes in what some regard as perhaps the best women’s cross country recruiting class of all time (more on that later).

The edge goes to Henes, who we wrote about above. But honorable mention goes to women’s soccer star Tziarra King, who wrapped up her sensational Wolfpack career third all time in program history in goals (48) and points (115).

King’s talent did not go unnoticed. She was picked eighth overall in the first round of the National Women’s Soccer League Draft by the Utah Royals FC.

King and her classmates and played a vital role in the revitalization of the program under the tutelage of head coach Tim Santoro.

Between 1997 and 2015, NC State had four different coaches and just three winning seasons overall (all three were 10 wins and either seven or eight losses). The program had a grand total of 21 ACC wins in that span and had back-to-back winless league campaigns prior to King and her classmates' arrival.

Over the past four years, NC State has made the NCAA Tournament each time, reaching the Sweet 16 in three of them, and gone a combined 17-15-8 in the ultra-competitive ACC.

Santoro scheduled a impressively challenging slate this fall, but NC State was able to navigate it with a 12-7-4 overall record and 4-2-4 mark in the ACC.

A strong case can be made for Chmiel of women’s cross country, who looks destined to become the next star runner for NC State, but we give the edge to Ikem Ekwonu in football.

Ekwonu had the difficult task of stepping into the starting left tackle role on the offensive line as a true freshman. The last true freshman to start at offensive tackle for NC State was in 2010. That is even more impressive considering Ekwonu was not among the large group of Pack rookies that enrolled early in the spring, and thus he was playing catchup when he arrived in the summer.

Pro Football Focus named Ekwonu second-team All-ACC, and he was selected to both PFF's and the FWAA-Shaun Alexander Freshman All-America Teams. The 6-foot-4, 298-pounder led NC State with 37 pancake blocks and allowed just two sacks in 12 games.

Men’s soccer, who made it back to the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive year, had an impressive triumph on the road at No. 5 Louisville, but the edge goes to the women’s soccer program.

Facing No. 8 Arkansas, who entered the game with a 17-3-2 overall record, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in Provo, Utah, the Wolfpack held a 1-0 lead at halftime thanks to an early goal from senior Kia Rankin, and then added some insurance when redshirt sophomore Lulu Guttenberger contributed another early in the second half.

A late score by Arkansas was not enough, and NC State, who outshot Arkansas 13-11 overall, won 2-1 to move on to the Sweet 16.

He did not get to play as a freshman, but during his sophomore season Kuda Muskwe proved that he is going to be a goal-scorer for the men’s soccer program. The England native tied for the team lead with five goals and added two assists, making him second behind star David Loera for most points with 12. Four of Muskwe's goals were match-winners.

When Katelyn Tuohy announced her college decision, it was a big deal in the cross country community. Tuohy is one of the most decorated high school runners of all time.

She is a three-time winner of the Gatorade National Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year, a three-time Nike Cross Nationals champion and in 2018 was selected as the (overall) Gatorade Female High School Athlete of the Year.

Tuohy owns numerous national high school records including the fastest 5K in cross country (16:06.87) and the fastest mile in track (4:33.87). For some perspective, her average split in that record-setting time in the 5K, if extended to a sixth kilometer, would have been almost 30 seconds faster than the national title winner this fall at the NCAA.

And Tuohy is going to run at NC State. She is part of an incoming group that Dyestat.com dubbed the “Fab Five” of women’s cross country.

The class also includes Alyssa Hendrix, who was the Gatorade Cross Country Runner of the Year in Florida and a 2019 Foot Locker Nationals All-American, and Marlee Starliper, who was the 2019 Foot Locker Nationals runner-up, a top-five finisher at Nike Cross Nationals and a two-time Pennsylvania Gatorade Cross Country Runner of the Year.

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