The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1318516
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 ■ 31 B BY JUSTIN H. WILLIAMS efore Joan Benoit Samuelson went on to become the first- ever women's Olympic mara- thon champion, she was a two-time All-American cross country runner at NC State in 1977 and 1978. After attending Bowdoin College in her home state of Maine for two years, Benoit Samuelson trans- ferred to NC State and was one of the school's first Title IX scholarship recipients. Prior to her professional career taking off after college, Benoit Samuelson had to com- pete to be considered the fastest runner on the Wolfpack. One of her teammates was fellow All- American Julie Shea, who went on to win two AIAW individual national titles in 1979 and 1980. In 1978, Benoit Samuelson and Shea led NC State to a second-place finish at the AIAW National Championships and the inaugural ACC women's cross country title. "The Shea sisters, Julie and Mary Kay, beat me up in training all the time," Benoit Samu- elson recalled. "Julie was really a top runner when I was there. I don't know if I ever beat her in a race. Mary was in high school, but she would come after school and train with us. I just felt like it was a race against Mary and Julie." Benoit Samuelson originally planned to stay at NC State for just one year, but ended up staying for two after missing most of her first outdoor track season due to contracting mono. "The coaches talked me back into coming back one more semester, so I did," Benoit Samuelson said. She would have never left Bowdoin in the first place if the school had a cross country team at the time. Benoit Samuelson played field hockey for Bowdoin, but decided to come to NC State so she could concentrate on her true athletic passion, long-distance running. "My first dream was to make it in the sport of ski racing, but it was a broken leg that I suf- fered in that sport that led to my running as a form of rehab," Benoit Samuelson explained. "I found with running, I didn't need a lot of special equipment, I didn't have to wait for the snow, I didn't have to travel to the mountains. I could go run right outside the front door." Benoit Samuelson, along with Julie Shea, became the first two All-American women's cross country runners in NC State history dur- ing the founding years of the program. She enjoyed training before class along Hillsborough Street and around Dorothea Dix Hospital before her morning classes. She also enjoyed the friendships that were made with her teammates and coaches. After helping put NC State women's cross country on the map, her homesickness became too much and she decided to move back home to complete her degree at Bowdoin. "It was a hard adjustment for me," Benoit Samuelson said of coming to NC State. "I wasn't sleeping well, and my roommate really didn't understand that an athlete needed sleep. She was an engineer and she studied late into the morning hours." Benoit Samuelson never stopped the train- ing habits she developed during her time in Raleigh, however. Less than one year after moving back to Maine to complete her degree, she competed in her first Boston Marathon in 1979. At that time, she was somewhat known for her ac- complishments in college competition, but she was not yet the household name she would become in the world of running. Everything changed when she won the 1979 Boston Marathon and set a new wom- en's competition record of 2:35:15, eight min- utes faster than the previous best. "That was a real turning point," Benoit Samuelson recalled. "I was in the genesis of women's distance running opportunities in track and field, road races and marathons. I really came around at the right time. I didn't plan to run forever. I planned to go on and teach or go to law school." After graduating from Bowdoin College months after her record-setting performance at the Boston Marathon, she earned the op- portunity to train for a winter in New Zealand, where she later qualified for the World Cross Country Championships in 1980. Following her stint in New Zealand, she ran in a series of elite competitions, which included wins at the Auckland Marathon in 1980 and the Nike OTC Marathon in Eugene, Ore., in 1982. "It seemed like it was one event after the next," Benoit Samuelson said. "I didn't know how far it would take me, I had no idea. I kept thinking, 'Well, I'll teach at some point or I'll go back to school.' But it kept me going, liter- ally and figuratively, all the time. Just about every weekend, I'd go off and race." Benoit Samuelson then returned to the U.S. where she worked in a biomechanics lab at a Nike production factory in Exeter, N.H. Then she accepted a coaching gig at Boston Univer- sity, continuing to train every day wherever her journey took her. Not long into her coaching career, she learned of a new competition that was set to take place at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, a women's marathon race. Already established as one of the best distance runners in the world by the early 1980s, she knew that RUNNING HER OWN RACE Legendary Distance Runner Joan Benoit Samuelson Earned One Of NC State's First Title IX Scholarships And Went On To World Fame JOAN BENOIT SAMUELSON Women's Cross Country (1977-78) Age: 63 Living: Freeport, Maine Occupation: Competitive distance runner, consultant for Nike Did You Know? Benoit Samuelson's time of 2:22:43 at the 1983 Boston Marathon was the best by an American woman for 28 years until 2011.