The women's cross country team traveled to Auburn, Ala., this past weekend to take part in its largest meet this season.
Out of 42 teams, the Blue Devils placed 15th with 467 points. William and Mary won the meet with 115 points.
"We went there for a learning experience," Duke coach Mike Forbes said. "With over 300 people racing, you are going to get pushed around, shoved, and spit on. The purpose was to run in a large race, take that experience and learn from it."
One Blue Devil runner, junior Erin Fleming, does best in these racing conditions, which was evident by her first-place finish on the team and 67th place overall in a time of 18:33. The time was Fleming's fastest of the year.
"Erin is a late season racer," Forbes said. "She gets excited about the large number of people and the competition and takes that situation as a challenge."
Freshmen composed the rest of the top five for the Blue Devils with Camile Wilson leading the pack, finishing 79th in 18:42. Teammates Kourtney Gallo, Liz Kane and Becky Price were not far behind, finishing in 18:45, 19:01 and 19:18, respectively. Sophomore Kim Folk, who is recovering from an illness, was sixth for the Blue Devils in 19:24.
The top five finished within 45 seconds of each other, but had a hard time finding each other during the race to pace off one another. At the two-mile mark, six runners were within 12 seconds of each other, but Forbes said that no one knew where their teammates were, so the Blue Devils were unable to work together during the race. But the coaches were encouraged by the small gap between the runners.
Additionally, Duke has now had three different runners finish first for the team in its meets, an indication of the team's depth and closeness between its runners. The only downside to this closeness is the fact that the Blue Devils do not have a definitive frontrunner.
"Two people were finishing every second, and when you don't have a frontrunner, you're already down 100 points," Forbes said.
Next weekend, the Blue Devils will run in the North Carolina Intercollegiates, and their goal is to win the meet. UNC, N.C. State, and Wake Forest will not be attending the meet, so Duke has a good chance to win. The Blue Devils will look to beat UNC-Charlotte and Appalachian State for the title.
"Next weekend will be a good opportunity to see how everyone bounces back-they ran well but finished 15th [this weekend]," Forbes said. "We need to take this as a challenge. [The win] is there if we run well and run aggressively."
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