For North Carolina State, this is getting too easy.
With five of the first eight finishers the Wolfpack men's cross-country team captured the Atlantic Coast Conference title for the fifth time in seven years Monday in Tallahassee.
Although North Carolina's John Cline took the individual title, completing the eight-kilometer course in 24:06.06, State's Chan and Corby Pons, who are twins, and Brendan Rodgers finished second through fourth, in that order-just six seconds behind Cline.
"[N.C. State] definitely deserves every bit of national recognition they get," men's associate coach Norm Ogilvie said. "It was a very impressive performance by them. We probably had the potential to run with their top guys, but we could not do that today. We're humbled a little bit."
By earning six All-ACC selections, N.C State easily outdistanced runner-up Wake Forest, 28-48. The Wolfpack's slowest runner, Chris Dugan, finished in 14th place behind Duke's top runner, junior Tom Becker. After earning All-ACC status last year with a 10th-place finish, Becker fell to 13th with a time of 24:51.8.
"I'm a little bit [disappointed]," Ogilvie said. "He should have more confidence than what he showed. He's definitely one of the better runners in the conference, and today he didn't show it. He's coming off two real good races, sometimes it's hard to put three races together. What we're hoping is that this motivates him to run well at [NCAA District III meet]."
Led by Becker and freshman Brendan Fitzgibbon, who turned in the meet's second-best freshman performance in 25:01.9, for 16th place, Duke wound up fifth, behind State, Wake, Clemson and UNC-off their preseason goal of third in the conference.
"There's a little disappointment on the team," sophomore Charlie Kelly said. "When you set lofty goals like that, you want to challenge yourself. Today was not our day. But we didn't run that poorly, it's just that we're in a tough conference. Everybody has to put this behind them and look ahead to the district meet now."
A disastrous race from Mike Park, who finished in 38th with a time of 25:52.3, factored into Duke's disappointing day. Before the race Ogilvie had projected Park to finish in the top 15, but the senior's final ACC meet came up short of expectations.
"We were telling him before the race he has to run the middle mile hard, and he didn't do that, he just didn't do it," Ogilvie said. "He let go very early in the race. It's just one of those things, he didn't have a good day. If we could understand why that happened, we would win all the time."
Running in his only third race since a season-ending stress fracture last year, Kelly surpassed all expectations in finishing third among Duke runners and 26th overall, in 25:22.7.
"I definitely feel 100% right now," Kelly said. "I was a little surprised with [myself]. I tend to start out a little flat. Today I picked it up in the middle of the race, and didn't get spent [energy-wise] early. Today was a good day for me."
Freshman Terry Brennan trailed Kelly across the line in 25:31.2 for 28th. Brennan was followed by Park, then junior Mike Caiazzo, freshman Mike McKeever and sophomore Kyle Leonard, who finished in 52nd, 57th and 58th, respectively.
With spots to run in the NCAA Championships in three weeks resting on their performance in the NCAA District III meet, the runners now look forward to that meet in two weeks at Greenville, S.C.
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