Courtesy of Norfolk State Athletic Communications


NORFOLK, Va. – When the spring sports season was shut down, it marked the end of a decade of Norfolk State athletics. From the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2020, it was a 10-year stretch that saw countless highlights across NSU's 15 total sports. Many of those programs' greatest achievements – since NSU made the jump to NCAA Division I in 1997 – came during this decade.
 
Over the course of the next few months, we are going to spotlight those storylines right here on NSUSpartans.com. Every week, we'll choose a different sport(s) and take you down memory lane before we get set to start a new decade of excellence. In addition, head over to our Twitter page (@NSUSpartans) where fans will have the opportunity to vote for what they think is the greatest highlight per sport. At the end, they will also be able to vote for the greatest overall highlight in NSU athletics during the past 10 years.
 
We have a double dose of highlights as we begin the fourth week of our series. This week, we will spotlight cross country, and we first turn our attention to the women's side. We've narrowed it down to four storylines from the past decade that we'll focus on, in no particular order.
 
A.) You don't come any closer to winning a title than NSU did in 2018. Behind four All-MEAC runners, the Spartans finished with 44 points in the team standings. They fell just one point short of champion Florida A&M, which came away with the title after compiling 43 points. Fridah Koech (fourth), Candice Higgins (ninth) and Ashah Koech (14^th) were named All-MEAC for placing in the top 15, while Martha Bissah came away with her second straight individual title, winning by 18 seconds. She became the first female runner to do so at the MEAC Championship since 2002-03.
Read more about NSU's runner-up finish in 2018.
 
B.) Of course, that must mean Bissah also won the title in 2017 as a sophomore. And that she did, in record-breaking time as well. She became NSU's first women's cross country champion since 2001, and she helped NSU finish third as a team for its best placement since 2010. Bissah, who did not compete in cross country as a freshman, won by more than 22 seconds over the second-place finisher with a time of 17:16.3. Higgins (fifth), Ashah Koech (ninth) and Caroline Samoei (15^th) also were named All-MEAC that year.
Read more about Bissah winning her first title in 2017.
 
C.) You would notice a trend if you track back to 2014. NSU placed eighth that year, then followed it up by finishing seventh in 2015 and fifth in '16. As we already mentioned, the Spartans were third and second in '17 and '18, respectively. Well, only one more place up to go. And that's exactly what they did in 2019. Behind four All-MEAC runners, the Spartans won their first championship since 2009 and just their second ever. Coach Kenneth Giles was named the Most Outstanding Coach for leading NSU to the title, 28 points ahead of second-place Maryland Eastern Shore. Fridah Koech (fourth), Samoei (ninth) and Kara Grant (13^th) each garnered All-MEAC honors, as did another runner we'll highlight in our fourth bullet point.
Read more about NSU's 2019 title.
 
D.) Bissah made it a three-peat in 2019, as she won the individual title yet again. Crossing the line 15 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher, Bissah became the first women's MEAC cross country runner to win three straight individual titles. She became the second ever to win three individual titles total behind Michelle Robinson of Delaware State, who won in 1987, '89 and '90. Bissah helped close the decade on a high point, going down as perhaps the best ever in NSU's cross country history.
Read more of Bissah's bio.