The men's track and field team came close to breaking one of Duke's oldest records at the nation's oldest indoor track meet last weekend.
The men's 4x800-meter relay team, composed of seniors Doug Kling, Pat Kelly, Miles Hall and freshman Mike Park, broke Duke's indoor record, and were only one second away from breaking the overall record in the event at the 72nd annual Intercollegiate Amateur Athletic Association of America (IC4A) meet held at Princeton University.
The team's time of 7:35.77 is second only to the 1971 Blue Devil record of 7:34.10, a race which former Olympian Bob Wheeler anchored.
On the first day of events, freshman Desi Thomas jumped a centimeter short of last week's fifth place Atlantic Coast Conference meet performance of 23-4 in the long jump. Thomas, in only his second week on the team, finished in 11th place and was only two centimeters away from scoring in the event.
In the mile, Hall ran his second best time of the indoor season, a 4:14.08, but missed the finals by one place. Hall ran 63-second splits for his first three quarters, but was unable to finish as strong in the final 400 meters. Kelly also ran the race, placing fourth in his heat in 4:16.64.
Later that afternoon, the 4x800-meter relay team ran a 7:40.22 in the trials, finishing second to Dartmouth in the first heat by only .02 seconds.
The highlight of the meet, though, occurred the following day in the finals of the relay event.
The Blue Devils were led off to a strong start by Kling. Kling's 1:54.4 split, his best time of the season, paced the team to second place at the hand-off, only a few feet off the lead.
Park then held the position, even pulling into the lead briefly before finishing his 800 meters in a personal best time of 1:54.7. The Blue Devils were again second when Kelly took the baton.
Like Park, Kelly closed in on the race leader from Georgetown, and ran in the lead shortly before the Hoya runner exchanged places with him. Kelly's time of 1:54.1 kept the team in its second-place position for the final hand-off to Hall.
Hall helped keep Duke in contention for the title throughout the final 800 meters. Since there was free substitution between the trials and the finals, many teams saved fresh runners for the anchor leg, but Hall did not let the fact that he had run twice the day before bother him. Hall went out quickly and was in third place with 200 meters to go before two runners passed him in the final stretch.
Duke finished in fifth place to score four points, the first time Duke has scored at the prestigious IC4A meet since 1992. In addition, Hall's time of 1:52.00 completed the team's trend of running personal best times in the event.
"Miles responded beautifully," assistant coach Norm Ogilvie said. "Everyone went all out and I'm very happy with the effort."
As an indication of how stiff the competition was, Duke's fifth place finish was only 1.4 seconds off the winning time run by Georgetown, whose anchor leg had won the open 800 meters earlier that day.
"This is the best 4x800 team we've put together in terms of talent," Hall said. "We had a great race staying up there the entire way and it was good to be in it until the end."
Kelly felt the race was the first time all four members of the relay were running to their potential.
"We surprised a lot of teams," Kelly said. "I don't think a lot of schools expected us to do that well."
According to Ogilvie, the tighter turns of the 200-meter track at Princeton were most likely a factor which slowed down the team's time. However, the foursome will have two more opportunities to break the overall record at the Raleigh Relays and Penn Relays later this season.
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