WINONA, Minn – Winona State junior and Menomonie High School graduate Connor Norby earned the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) Elite 18 Award for men’s cross country, recognizing the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average competing at the NSIC Cross Country Championships, last month in Wayne, Neb.
The NSIC Elite 18 Award, created during the conference’s 25th anniversary in 2016-17, honors those who excel both academically and athletically at the championship level.
Norby, a computer science and Spanish double major from Menomonie, carries a perfect 4.00 GPA. On the course, he placed 71st at the 2025 NSIC Championships, Oct. 24, with a time of 27:41.91, contributing to Winona State’s sixth-place team finish with 187 points.
The Warriors closed their season at the NCAA Division II Central Regional Nov. 8 in Joplin, Mo, finishing 16th. Norby finished 106th in the race in a time of 33:31.49. After two-kilometers in the 10K race, Norby was 155th, then improved to 119th after 7K and moving up 13 more spots in the final three kilometers.
Norby competed in four races this season, including a 14th place finish and a season-best time of 26:56.7 in the 8-kilometer run at the Griffon Invite, Oct. 4 at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Mo.
The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) is a 16-team, 18-sport NCAA Division II league featuring institutions across Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The conference emphasizes competitive success while fostering leadership, academic achievement, and community involvement among its student-athletes.
Layne Pitt retired as the longest serving sports information director at UW-Stout and also worked more than a decade at the Dunn County News.
Menomonie Collegians by Layne Pitt is licensed under a CC BY SA 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Menomonie Mustangs Athletics and Activities | UW-Stout Blue Devil Athletics