After an opening weekend of big wins at home for both Blue Devil teams, Duke's men and women split from Durham in search of success in other venues.
Led by a high-powered freshman class, the Blue Devils did just that.
Duke's women made the short trip to Cary, N.C., to compete in the Adidas XC Invitational at WakeMed Soccer Park Friday afternoon, taking second out of 13 teams with 60 points. The men’s team traveled to Rock Hill, S.C., to compete in the Winthrop Invitational Saturday, taking home the title with 19 points. The Blue Devils can attribute much of their success to their newcomers—Amanda Beach and Michaela Reinhart led Duke in Cary, and Paul Dellinger and C.J. Ambrosio put up impressive times in Rock Hill.
“They're the best freshman class we've ever had,” men’s head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “It'll count when we see how we do in November, but we're off to a super start.... They come to compete. That's the attitude of our freshmen—you have to earn it.”
Ogilvie’s team dominated the Winthrop Invite, taking 11 of the top 12 slots to notch a near-perfect score on eight-kilometer course.
From the outset, Duke was dialed in to win, with the Blue Devils holding the top seven positions in the race by the first mile marker—ahead of last year’s individual champion, Winthrop senior Kevin Mills. However, Mills did not let his home title slip away easily. By the third mile, the Eagles senior had just three runners ahead of him, and Mills put in one final push to the finish line to steal second place at 25:19.77—less than a second ahead of Dellinger in third at 25:20.36.
However, despite the dramatic comeback from Mills in the home stretch of the race, the Blue Devils controlled the afternoon. Junior Nikhil Pulimood notched his first-ever collegiate win, leading the pack by a comfortable distance with a time of 25:15.21. Just behind Dellinger was Ambrosio with a time of 25:25.25, and rounding out the scoring for Duke were seniors Jordan Burton and Alec Kunzweiler with times of 25:38.77 and 25:50.29, respectively.
“We won easily.,” Ogilvie said. “There were seven Division I teams and we were first with 19 points—15 is a perfect score, so that's pretty close.”
Although the women’s team did not take home the top prize in Cary against stiffer competition, the Blue Devils still turned heads with some impressive times on the five-kilometer course.
Beach held fourth place with a time of 17:07.3, and Reinhart came in just behind her at 17:12.4 for fifth. Sophomore Sarah Armstrong and junior Kim Hallowes were the only other Blue Devils to crack the top 20, with both athletes bounding forward by 12 spots after the two-kilometer mark. The mid-race momentum propelled Armstrong to finish at 12th at 17:43.2 and Hallowes to find the finish line just behind her at 17:44.6. Duke's fifth finisher was junior Sheridan Wilbur in 18:09.3, good for 30th place.
N.C. State—the No. 1 team in the Southeast Region—won the race easily with 20 points and the top three individual finishers, led by Bethlehem Taye, who crossed the line in 17:00.0
“We're very happy with second place,” Blue Devil women’s head coach Rhonda Riley said. “The goal of this meet was for us to work on some stuff and work on being a team and to have just a small gap from one to five and one to six, and the ladies definitely accomplished that.”
The women’s team will have two weeks of preparation before splitting between Bethlehem, Pa., for the Paul Short and Charlotte, N.C., for the Royals Challenge. The top seven Duke runners will take on Bethlehem, where they will face more top-level competition nationally.
The top 10 runners on the men’s team will be back in action next weekend for the Roy Griak Invite in Minneapolis, Minn., Saturday. It will mark the Blue Devils' first outing against nationally-ranked competition and will serve as a true test of the young Duke team's talent.
“We trained really hard for months, and our main preparation for Griak now is to recover from this race,” Ogilvie said. “We've got [our runners] where we want them, but they're going to run into some great teams at Griak—we have a bunch of nationally-ranked teams that will be there and we'll get real serious next week. We'll see what they're made of.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.