Giving News

Q&A: Running With the Pack
October 18, 2022 Staff
Katelyn Tuohy
Katelyn Tuohy is quickly becoming one of NC State's winningest student-athletes emphasis on "quickly." A junior in the Poole College of Management, Tuohy is also a blazing-fast runner on the women's cross country and women's track and field teams who has made history during her first three seasons with the Wolfpack under Coach Laurie Henes.

For instance, Tuohy became the university's first track and field student-athlete man or woman to place higher than third in an NCAA Indoor Championships race when she finished second in the 3,000-meter and 5,000-meter races during the 2021-22 season. She was also the 2022 NCAA Outdoor Champion (5,000-meter), 2022 ACC Outdoor Champion (1,500-meter) and 2022 ACC Indoor Champion (5,000-meter), and she posted the fastest 1,500-meter and 5,000-meter times of any collegian in the country in 2022.

NC State writer Taylor Pardue recently spoke to Tuohy about her decision to join the Pack, what she wants to accomplish following graduation and how private support has enabled her to Think and Do. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)

https://news.giving.ncsu.edu/2022/10/qa-running-with-the-pack/

I don't want to say we got lucky, but it really all came together in a "perfect storm" to get Kelsey Chmiel to commit here initially (and she largely came because she has always wanted to be a veterinarian). Then that snowballed into Katelyn committing, because Katelyn has stated that one of the big reasons she committed to NC State is because she respected Kelsey so much. Katelyn said in an interview I listened to that she basically knew she was going to commit to NC State before she even came on her visit, because of Kelsey already being here.

Katelyn is (and will be) one of the most elite and highly recognized/celebrated athletes to ever come through NC State. She currently has 85k followers on Instagram, which is almost more than our football team's official account (94k).

GuerrillaPack said:

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I don't want to say we got lucky, but it really all came together in a "perfect storm" to get Kelsey Chmiel to commit here initially (and she largely came because she has always wanted to be a veterinarian). Then that snowballed into Katelyn committing, because Katelyn has stated that one of the big reasons she committed to NC State is because she respected Kelsey so much. Katelyn said in an interview I listened to that she basically knew she was going to commit to NC State before she even came on her visit, because of Kelsey already being here.

Katelyn is (and will be) one of the most elite and highly recognized/celebrated athletes to ever come through NC State. She currently has 85k followers on Instagram, which is almost more than our football team's official account (94k).

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Completely agreed. A lot of circumstance turned out very favorably for us to land arguably the greatest high school girls distance recruit in history.

Katelyn's also said Coach Laurie Henes and her daughter Elly played a big role in her parents being comfortable with her going to NC State since she would be coached by someone who understood what it was like to not just coach, but to be a parent of a high level athlete.

We were a consistently top five program for years, hovering right around 4,5, or 6, so we put ourselves in a position to get that perfect storm. Big credit to Coach Henes for being in that position. But yes, that storm has elevated us currently to the top program in the country. Hopefully we can continue to build on that. It's hard staying on top of the podium.