Duke cross country seeks strong showing at NCAA Pre-Nationals

One year ago, the NCAA Pre-Nationals meet spelled doom for Duke’s postseason hopes as the Blue Devils nearly left Terre Haute, Ind., in last place.

As Duke heads to the E.P. Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Ky., for the same meet in a new location, the men’s squad will take on the eight-kilometer preview race for the national championships with a new leader and new attitude Saturday at 9:30 a.m. The Blue Devil women will also compete in the six-kilometer race at 10:15 a.m. in their first NCAA Pre-Nationals appearance in more than a decade.

Last year, the men’s squad hoped to earn an at-large bid to the national championships by outscoring a handful of the nation’s top teams but finished 41st out of 46 teams after a sluggish start and no luck passing other athletes as the race progressed. Duke could not recover in its final races of the season, finishing 12th out of 15 at the ACC championships and not scoring as a team at the NCAA Southeast Regional Championship. But graduate student Shaun Thompson is back on the Blue Devil roster and is leading his team to the front of the pack.

“I hope it’s dramatically better this year,” Duke head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “If we do get out as well as we did two weeks ago, I would expect us to be a whole lot better than we were at this meet last year. Shaun definitely pushes everybody else. He’s everything you could want in a Division I cross country athlete. The team sees a guy who has a great work ethic, runs 95 miles a week to get better and really takes care of himself.”

Thompson paced 11 Duke harriers through a promising first half of a six-kilometer race at the Hokie Invitational Sept. 4 with the Blue Devils out in front of the field and poised to sweep their opening meet before they were forced off the course due to lightning. The Baldwinsville, N.Y., native and the rest of the squad again got off to an aggressive start in their first eight-kilometer race at the Princeton Inter-Regional Meet Oct. 3, leading through three-quarters of the course. Thompson kept up the pace through the whole race en route to his first individual victory of the season, finishing in 23:34.9, while his teammates did not have the energy to fend off their competitors in the final kilometer.

“Usually this point in the year is when you start transitioning from doing a lot of volume and strength work to less volume and more speed work,” Ogilvie said. “We specifically worked on our finishing kick this week for the first time all year. Hopefully that will give the guys a little bit more confidence when it comes time for sprinting at the end.”

But despite running out of gas at the end of the race, Duke still posted faster times at the Princeton Inter-Regional Meet than at Pre-Nationals last year. Senior Blake Udland—the first Blue Devil across the line in Terre Haute in 2014 with a time of 25:44.4—ran one minute and six seconds faster two weeks ago. The improvement was even more dramatic for senior Daniel Moore. The Melbourne, Fla., native shaved off more than two and a half minutes from his Pre-Nationals time last year with a performance of 24:34.3 at Princeton.

More than 10 nationally ranked teams will challenge Duke to keep up its new strategy of aggressive starts. No. 1 Colorado, No. 3 Oregon and No. 10 Georgetown will toe the line alongside No. 17 host Louisville. Nearly 40 total teams will be in attendance Saturday, all of which are ranked in the top 15 in their respective regions, Ogilvie said. 

On the women’s side, the Blue Devils are hoping for a strong team performance at the young squad’s biggest race to date as the field is just as strong as the men’s.

Junior captain Madison Granger and freshman Sheridan Wilbur have been consistent top performers for Duke, both turning in career-best five-and six-kilometer times at the adidas Challenge Sept. 18 and Princeton Inter-Regional Meet, respectively. Both will look to cross the line with new personal records in the longer distance Saturday, with Granger looking to beat 21:18.0 and Wilbur 21:48.6. Co-captain Anima Banks has not been far behind her teammates, clocking in at 21:52.6 at the Oct. 3 meet.

But the rest of the Blue Devils struggled to finish as a group in the cold and rain at Princeton. Freshman Kim Hallowes and senior Olivia Anderson finished 62nd and 74th, respectively.

A strong performance by the Blue Devils could earn Duke a return trip to Louisville for the NCAA championships Nov. 21.