CHAPEL HILL - The women's swimming and diving team will be enjoying something this morning that it hasn't had in four months-sleep.
After waking up at six in the morning to train since they started competing in November, the Blue Devils finished their season this weekend at the Atlantic Coast Conference Championships in Chapel Hill. Duke finished last of the seven teams in the ACC, with 131 points.
As the only team in the ACC that does not give scholarships for swimming and diving, Duke entered the meet looking to swim for personal bests, and not for the team competition.
"Our kids really didn't focus on a team score," Duke coach Bob Thompson said.
After an opening disqualification in a relay cost Virginia 40 points in the team competition, Clemson ended up first in the conference with 708 points. The Tigers pulled away from perennial powerhouses Virginia and North Carolina on Friday night in the middle distance events.
Individually, though, Duke acheived many goals with freshman Megan Kavanaugh, sophomores Leslie King and Jill Spitzfadden and seniors Chandra Littooy and Whitney Greene swimming their lifetime bests.
"Almost everyone had their best meet of the year, and there were nine personal bests," Thompson said.
However, these personal bests were generally not fast enough to qualify for the final rounds of the events. The meet was structured so that preliminary rounds were swam in the mornings, and the top sixteen swimmers would return in the evenings. A finals round settled the top eight and a consolation round determined nine through 16. However, for distance events the events were only swam one time.
Kavanaugh was the only Duke swimmer to return for the evening rounds, as she placed 15th and 14th in the 100 meter and 200 meter breaststoke, respectively. Both her 1:07.67 time in the 100 and 2:23.57 in the 200 were personal bests.
The other Duke swimmer to place in an individual event was freshman Catherine Preston in the 1650 freestyle. Her mile time of 17:16.91 was good for 13th place, but was off of her best time of the season.
Preston was expected to qualify in the 500 freestyle, but was seven seconds off her best time, swimming 5:05.41.
"I was happy that I could score some points in the mile, but in general I was a little disappointed," she said.
Spitzfaden, King and senior Susan Kresel all narrowly missed qualifying for the 200 freestyle, finishing in 17th, 18th and 19th place, respectively, in the morning heats.
King also swam a strong 17:31.72 for 17th place in the mile freestyle in only her third time swimming that event.
Thompson sees the lack of Blue Devils in evening events as an indication of the improvement of the conference as a whole, and not a reflection of Duke's team. In recent years, the addition of Florida State and 14 more scholarships has made the ACC a nationally competitive conference.
"It's all relative," Thompson said. "We swam so much better than we did last year, but the meet has gotten so much faster. It's more difficult for our kids to come back and swim at night."
The conference has improved in the last decade for women's teams especially. Since the passage of Title IX in 1972 mandated an equal number of scholarships for men and women, women's swimming scholarships are often used to equal out the number of men's scholarships given to football.
Since men are only allowed 11 scholarships per team, as opposed to 14 scholarships for women, Duke is hoping to fare better in the men's championships, which start in Chapel Hill on Thursday and last until Saturday.
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