The men's and women's cross country teams open their seasons on Saturday as they attempt to defend their titles in a pair of invitational meets.
The men's team is looking for its fourth consecutive win at the Pembroke Invitational in Pembroke, N.C. The women's team, meanwhile, is hoping to repeat last year's victory at the Seahawk Invitational in Wilmington.
The Pembroke Invitational -- which includes St. Augustine's, Campbell, Davidson and The Citadel -- will serve primarily as a warm-up meet for the Blue Devils. Pembroke features a shorter course and easier competition than most meets which the team will run this season.
"It's only a four-mile course as opposed to a five-mile course," senior Kevin Hilton said. "It's a relatively flat course. It's a good warm-up meet. It gets us exposed, especially the freshmen, to college racing. I believe it's a huge step from high school racing to college competition."
Hilton, one of the team's top guns, hopes to improve on his third place finish of a year ago at Pembroke. His toughest competition for the individual title should come from Joe King and Lomnyaki Loibuka of St. Augustine's.
Miles Hall and freshman Darin Mellinger will be the other two top guns for Duke. These runners will follow a few seconds behind the pacers, Conrad Hall and Pat Kelly, for the two-thirds of the race before they release to make their strong push for the finish.
Sweepers Pat Neville, Scott Wolckenhauer, Scott Miller and Brian Sydow will trail the other runners to prevent anyone from falling behind the rest of the team.
"Cross country is a team effort," coach Al Buehler said. "Our whole goal with our training is to get the best collection of fast times in there. We want our team spread to be under a minute. We want to get five guys in within 60 seconds, and that's what we should do every time."
While it wants to win the Pembroke Invitational again, the team is remaining focused on improving upon its last place finish in the 1992 Atlantic Coast Conference championships.
"Last year we finished ninth to Florida Sate," senior Conrad Hall said. "Last week we had a time trial and we had four guys faster than our fastest guy the year before, so I think we have a much better team this year and have a much closer group up front.
"We're going to beat Florida State and Maryland and we have a shot at UVa, and maybe Carolina. Our goal is to at least beat two teams in the ACC."
The women's team would also like to use its meet on Saturday to prepare for improvement within league competition.
The Seahawk Invitational will be the first collegiate meet for the eight freshmen on Duke's team. However, the course is by no means unfamiliar to all of the Blue Devil runners.
Amy Gravitt, Liz Hanly and Alex Orban finished 12th through 14th, respectively, in last year's meet and all three are much stronger runners now.
"We have an interesting blend of returning and new runners," coach Mike Forbes said. "How that blend works out will go a long way to dictating our success for this season."
The women's primary goal Saturday is to win another championship. However, they also hope to display individual improvement over last season and exhibit a team spread of less than 30 seconds for their top four runners.
"We're looking for several things," Forbes said. "One goal is to win the meet and to have an individual win the meet. We want to try to be aggressive, to put ourselves in a position to race people of other teams and to use our teammates to help us."
The Blue Devils' best hope for an individual champion on Saturday will come from Jeanne McFeely and Kristin Bucher. McFeely and Bucher alternated between the second and third positions on the team last year.
While the cross country teams anticipate victories this weekend, they realize that early season triumphs will not automatically translate into success against ACC rivals.
"This is like starting off," Buehler said. "This is not like the Duke football team playing Florida State. This is like the basketball team opening up against Johns Hopkins. There are some respectable runners here, but not great teams."
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