Six days after both their teams won an ACC cross country title, coaches Rollie Geiger and Laurie Henes earned conference coach-of-the-year accolades, the league announced yesterday. The awards are based on the vote of the other cross country coaches in the conference.

“Any award that I win goes to the athletes in our program,” Geiger, the men’s team coach, said. “Anything I receive is a reflection on them.”

Henes, who won as the women’s coach this season, wasn’t available for a reaction Thursday afternoon.

Geiger said after redshirting “to sit out and retain a year of eligibility” some of his key runners a year ago, he knew this year had the potential to be special for N.C. State.

“We kind of thought that we might be setting up something special for this year and next [when we redshirted players],” he said. “But while I’m pleased to have Gavin [Coombs] and Wes [Smith] running, I’m equally as glad to have the athletes we had out there last year making so much progress.”

But the two teams and two coaches don’t have much time to celebrate. The Wolfpack Invitational is tomorrow in Cary. However, the home team is only running three female and one male runner tomorrow. Redshirt juniors Georgia Davis, Elena Helmerick and Jessie Yester will all compete tomorrow. The male runner is running unattached, and therefore the coaches cannot talk about him because of NCAA regulations.

Assistant coach Jackie Brooks, who will be coaching the three female runners tomorrow, did not return phone calls to her office Thursday.

Geiger said the intention of the Wolfpack Invitational is not to give another race to the runners who compete all season long, but instead, to give those a chance who don’t normally compete the chance.

“This is just an opportunity for those who didn’t run in the conference races and those who won’t run in the NCAA’s,” he said.

State enters NCAA competition next weekend at the Southeast Regional in Louisville, Ky.