Considering all the rust that has accumulated in its 27 years of absence from the grandest extravaganza in collegiate cross country, Duke's 26th-place showing at the NCAA Championships might not have been stellar, but it was certainly not a bust either.
Paced by junior Tim Schaefer, Duke finished in 26th place on the Rim Rock Farm course in Lawrence, Kan. The Blue Devils' top-five runners collected a score of 566, narrowly missing their pre-meet goal of cracking the nation's top-25 by just four points.
Arkansas captured its ninth National Championship with a 97-point outing, while Colorado senior Adam Goucher won the individual title with a course record 29:26.90.
"This is [our runners'] first Nationals and they found out how tough it is," men's associate head coach Norm Ogilvie said. "It was a brutally tough course, and we felt like in this situation, there was a very fine line between going out too fast and then staggering home or going out and running conservative and at least beat some people.
"The margin for error at Nationals is very small, so we decided to be a little conservative since it's [the runners'] first time here and I thought we ran well."
On what proved to be a grueling course at Rim Rock Farm, Schaefer ran arguably the best race of his Duke career in leading the Blue Devils across the finish line. Schaefer finished in 90th place overall with a time of 32:17.80, marking the first time in his Duke career he has led the team in a meet.
Although Schaefer has rarely found his way into Duke's top three this season, Ogilvie felt confident Schaefer would give him a solid performance in the season's biggest meet, especially since he finished fourth at the Southeastern Regional Qualifying Meet last week.
"I thought he would have a good day-he's a Midwesterner and he usually runs pretty well in big meets," Ogilvie said. "What a great way [for him] to go into [his] senior year-finish first on your team for Nationals. He's going to be real senior leader for us next year."
While Schaefer found a great way to head into his senior season, a staple of the program in the last four years ran his final cross-country race. Senior Tom Becker, a three-time Duke cross-country MVP, closed the final chapter in his career with a 115th place finish in 32:29.60.
After leading the Blue Devils in the last three races, Becker couldn't find his rhythm early in the race and came in third among Blue Devils behind Schaefer and sophomore Terry Brennan (32:34.00, 109th place).
"I guess I was not aware of just how big and just how crowded this race was going to be," Becker said. "In the first mile or two, it was literally just wall to wall people. For one of the first times in my career, I just could not make the moves that I wanted to make because of spacing.
"It's very hard to come back 9 days after a 10k to run another 10k, especially under all that pressure and this is an exceptionally challenging course-the toughest course we've run on all year."
On the bright side, Duke will return everyone except Becker from Monday's starting line-up, including fourth- and fifth-place finishers Brendan Fitzgibbon (32:46.90, 125th) and Charlie Kelly (32:49.10, 127th). For this reason, the Blue Devils are certainly optimistic about next season.
"We've established a standard now and we've just got to keep coming back, raising the bar a bit each year," Schaefer said. "We're probably shooting for top 15 in the nation next year. We definitely had the ability to come close this year, and we didn't come through on that. Each of us is going to have to step up next year.
"We were disappointed, but it was definitely a learning experience. Now we know what it's all about, what it's like to be there and what we have to do to place well once we're there."
Sophomore Megan Sullivan also found out exactly what it's like to be there when she became the first Duke woman ever to run in the NCAA Championships yesterday. Earning her bid as an individual, Sullivan finished the 5k course in 124th place with a time of 18:28.76.
"It felt great just to be out there and compete with them and I'm pretty happy with how I raced," Sullivan said. "[Being the first Duke woman to compete in the Nationals] was quite a thing for the program, especially since it's a good indicator of what's going to be coming in the future. I'm just the start of something great that's going to happening the next few years."
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