MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Dan Statford's West Virginia University men's soccer team joined a very exclusive club earlier today when it was voted No. 1 in the country by United Soccer Coaches and Top Drawer Soccer.
 
It's a program first for the Mountaineers, who reached No. 2 in the coaches' poll twice on Sept. 17, 2023, and Oct. 22, 2023.
 
In addition to 19-time NCAA champion rifle, there have been just a handful of other WVU sports to ever reach No. 1.
 
Nikki Izzo-Brown's women's soccer team began the 2017 campaign ranked No. 1 in the country following its runner-up finish in the Women's College Cup in 2016. Five different weeks during the 2016 season the Mountaineers were voted No. 1 in the polls.
 
Prior to that, football reached the top of the rankings in the USA Today Coaches' Poll during the final week of the regular season in 2007; the Mountaineers were ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press Top 25 rankings that week.
 
And Fred Schaus' Mountaineer men's basketball squad, led by All-American Jerry West, catapulted to the top of the rankings on Dec. 24, 1957, following back-to-back victories over Kentucky and North Carolina in the Kentucky Invitational. WVU that year spent eight total weeks at No. 1, including the final AP poll released on March 11, 1958.
 
Boxing, which competed as an intercollegiate sport at WVU until 1943, captured four straight Eastern Boxing Conference championships during the mid-1930s when the league was considered the top collegiate boxing conference in the country. 
 
In 1938, the Mountaineers had two individual national champions in heavyweight Ashby Dickerson and 165-pounder Sam Littlepage, giving the Mountaineers the co-national title along with Catholic University and Virginia.
 
NCAA team titles in boxing were not awarded in 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1936 and boxing was discontinued as a collegiate sport in 1960 when Wisconsin's Charlie Mohr collapsed and died one week after the NCAA championships.