While most students who went to Florida last week were relaxing in the sun, the men's track and field team opened its outdoor season at the Florida State Relays in Tallahassee.
Although it was spring break, the members of the team did not take the meet--one of the largest in the Southeast--lightly. The Blue Devils captured two first-place finishes in the distance medley relay and the 4x1500-meter relay events as well as displaying their depth in the 4x800-meter relay.
On Friday afternoon, Duke was challenged by nine other teams in the DMR. Senior Doug Kling put the team in second place at the start of the event with his 1:53.3 800-meter split.
Kling then handed off to freshman Mark Simmons, whose 49.9 400 meters helped the Blue Devils remain in second place. Senior Pat Kelly then ran nearly even splits for each lap of his 1,200 meters to finish in a personal best 3:01.3. At the hand-off for the last portion of the event, the team was only behind Big 10 powerhouse Wisconsin by 10 meters.
Senior Miles Hall slowly cut down this deficit over the course of his 1,600-meter race and pulled away from Wisconsin senior and former national high school cross country champion Brian Dameworth in the final lap. His split of 4:08.6 equalled his best time ever in the mile and led the team to its first-place finish in a time of 9:50.20.
"It was a big thrill to beat Wisconsin," assistant coach Norm Ogilvie said.
On the following day in the 4x1500-meter relay, Wisconsin was again expected to challenge, but ended up scratching the event. With no other serious competitors, most members of the team ended up running in front by themselves. Yet the runners did not ease up because of this lack of competition.
Freshman Mike Park led off with a personal best time of 4:00. Kelly then ran a 3:54.1 split to give Duke a huge lead. Kling followed this up with his 3:59.9 split, and running completely by himself, Hall was able to run a 3:55.1 for his 1,500 meters. Duke's final time of 15:50.20 was over 30 seconds ahead of second-place Western Kentucky.
Because Duke's usual 4x800-meter relay team of Park, Kelly, Kling and Hall participated in the 4x1500 relay, the coaches relied on a new corps of runners for the event.
"It was a different team than we usually run, but it only illustrated our depth," Ogilvie said.
The team of junior Joe Crespo, sophomores Jason Manse and Danny Schuman and Simmons combined to finish in seventh place with a time of 7:49.91. Schuman had the fastest split for the team with his personal best time of 1:56.3. In addition, Manse and Simmons raced the 800 meters for their first time ever at Duke.
In the open events, sophomore Brett Marcus raced to a 15:33.53 finish in the 5,000 meters, his best time ever in the event. Junior T.J. Redmon totaled 5,600 points in his first decathlon, showing he has the potential to score in the event at the Atlantic Coast Conference meet.
"It was a very, very good start for Duke for the outdoor season," Ogilvie said.
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