After opening the season against their alumni last weekend, the Blue Devils will look to hold their own against some of the nation's top teams a week later.
Duke will get its first taste of competition in the fall when it heads to Terre Haute, Ind., for the Sycamore Invitational Saturday at 10 a.m. The Blue Devils will compete against No. 3 Northern Arizona and No. 18 Michigan on the men's side, with the Duke women running against Indiana State and No. 9 Michigan.
Although both Blue Devil teams are trying to replace stars in Shaun Thompson and Anima Banks, Duke has very different personnel among its men and women. Seniors Stephen Shine and Alec Kunzweiler led the way for the veteran Blue Devil men in the 6,000-meter alumni meet race last weekend, and freshman Lindsay Billings paced the group of freshmen and sophomores comprising this year's women's team in a 4,000-meter race.
Both the men and the women will get a preview of November's NCAA championship course in Indiana this weekend, which should help the runners who return to Terre Haute later in the fall. On Saturday, the men will run 8,000 meters and the women will run 5,000.
“Most of the time you make the NCAA championship, it is a first-time thing and the nerves are high, and there is TV [coverage], so being familiar with the course is just one thing that helps settle you in a little bit,” Duke men's head coach Norm Ogilvie said.
The Indiana course will host several teams in November, but this weekend only three teams on both the men's and women's sides will run, giving the Blue Devils a closer look at some of the nation's top competition.
“I’d like to see the entire team step up and come together,” first-year women's head coach Rhonda Riley said. “Michigan is a top-10 national team, so it will be nice to mix it up and see how we do against them.”
Riley said she is looking for sophomore Olivia Gwynn, who finished sixth on the team at the alumni meet, to take on a leadership role this weekend.
The Swansea, United Kingdom, native missed most of the 2015-16 season with shin and femur injuries, but is hoping to build momentum in her second year and guide her younger teammates.
“There are only about 12 of us, so the team bond is so strong, and being able to set an example will mean so much to me because we are all going to be going through our whole college careers together,” Gwynn said. "I have had a lot of time watching how [my teammates] are doing, and now I feel like it is time to go out and kick ass too.”
Although the Blue Devils did not compete against another team last week, they did get experience running in nasty weather conditions, with rain falling steadily throughout the competition. They could face similar circumstances this weekend, with the forecast calling for heavy rain and thunderstorms.
Ogilvie added that the Indiana course was also built on top of a former garbage dump, so it is not expected to hold up if it does rain.
At least one Duke runner will be comfortable even if it rains this weekend—since she is from the United Kingdom, Gwynn said she is used to competing in the rain.
“The rain does not bother me in the slightest—it makes me quite comfortable actually. I like the rain, I like the mud [and] I like the hills, so to me that is perfect,” Gwynn said. “It is more about not worrying about the conditions on the day, it’s about worrying about your race.”
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