The men's cross country team produced tangible evidence of its massive improvement from last season Saturday.
The Blue Devils capped off their most successful season in over a decade by placing 15th out of 50 teams with 454 points at the NCAA District III meet at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. It was Duke's best team performance of the year.
The District III meet is run on the same 10K course every year, so the race provides teams with an accurate comparison of year-to-year improvement. Last season, the Blue Devils earned 692 points in finishing 23rd. This means that the average Duke runner moved up an astonishing 49 places from a year ago.
Freshman Darin Mellinger led the Duke squad with his 64th place (32:14) finish in the first 10K race of his career. Mellinger was among the top freshmen in the district.
Senior co-captain Kevin Hilton finished 78th in his final cross country meet as a Blue Devil. His 32:26 performance was 18 seconds faster than he ran at the same meet last year. Hilton got off to a fast start in the race, running the first mile in 4:46.
"Kevin was courageously ambitious in his attempt to go out fast," head coach Al Buehler said. "He had to pay the price for that in the last mile-and-a-half."
Hilton's fast start meant that Mellinger had to pace himself with runners from other schools. This was not much of a problem for him because almost 300 harriers competed in the meet.
"In smaller meets, you can find your teammates more easily," Mellinger said. "A big meet like this takes away that whole team aspect that we focus on. However, I could always find someone of similar ability."
Despite the crowded field, Duke's pacers were able to stay together through most of the race. Junior Brian Sydow, who ran the race in 33:02, led this group of Blue Devils with his 105th place showing.
Junior Pat Kelly, who finished 117th, was Duke's most improved runner. His 33:15 pace was one-and-a-half minutes faster than his performance at the 1992 district meet. Junior Miles Hall came in one second behind Kelly in 118th place.
Overall, the Blue Devils had a 62 second team spread -- the difference between the first and the fifth runners. This indicates that the team ran better as a unit than it has in most of its other meets this year. Duke was able to keep its team spread near a minute even though this race was two kilometers longer than a typical race.
"I think it was a very good race for our team," Mellinger said. "We pretty much accomplished what we set out to do."
The Blue Devils' success at the District III meet would seem unlikely since Duke is one of the few teams at the race whose runners are not eligible for athletic scholarships.
"We are performing way above what you would expect from a non-scholarship team," Buehler said. "We'd like to think that what we're doing is similar to what Mike Krzyzewski does with the Duke basketball team except that we don't have scholarships."
Duke finished sixth among Atlantic Coast Conference teams at the race, which equals its performance in the conference meet two weeks ago. The Blue Devils also beat East Tennessee State and Kentucky -- the top two teams in the district a year ago -- in Saturday's race. Duke's strong performance, despite its lack of a top-50 runner, indicates that the Blue Devils have a deep squad.
Duke's runners have run 10-mile power runs throughout the season to prepare for the longer distance of this meet.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.