The Chronicle
Before the Roy Griak Invitational on Saturday, women's cross country coach Jan Ogilvie told freshman phenom Sheela Agrawal to shoot for the top 15, considering the high caliber of competition.
After the race, Ogilvie was simply speechless.
Her freshman had finished in the top one.
Running in only her second collegiate race, Agrawal ripped through the five-kilometer course in 17:31, edging out Lisa Aguilera of team winner Arizona State by one second.
"She's up against some of the best in the country, and she took them on," Ogilvie said. "There's no stopping her. It's the best individual performance that a women has ever had at Duke. She established herself as one of the top runners in the country."
Agrawal's performance was made even more impressive by the quality of competition. Nine top-25 teams, including No. 1 Brigham Young, participated in the meet. But Saturday, Agrawal was simply better than any of them.
Taking the advice of her coach, the Massachusetts native began the race cautiously, but she had worked her way into the top 10 at the 2K mark. With one kilometer left, Agrawal found herself in the front pack of six runners. And that's when she reached for something extra.
"We went up this little hill and three of them dropped back," Agrawal said. "I was a bit surprised. I knew a few of the girls that I ran against in high school. They had always beaten me in races-that was kind of surprising."
At the 800-meter mark, Agrawal and Aguilera surged ahead and dueled head-to-head on the final straightaway. Agrawal overtook Aguilera at the 150-meter mark, got passed 50 meters later, took the lead for good with 75 meters left and held on for the win.
"I surged just to find out where she was, then when she came back on me and then went in front, I knew it was going to be really hard," Agrawal said. "When I saw the finish line, it was like, 'Oh my God.' It didn't really hit me until later on-I'm still kind of in disbelief."
Agrawal's top finish propelled the unranked Blue Devils into eighth place overall and onto the national scene, as they beat No. 10 Providence, No. 17 Boston College and No. 25 Colorado State.
Junior Megan Sullivan, Duke's top runner the last two seasons, took on a cold and the course, finishing in 30th place overall with a 18:22. Sullivan was followed by junior Ellie Culp, who finished 66th overall with an 18:55. Sophomores Maddy Woodmansee and Annie Wickman rounded out the top five in 74th and 75th place overall with times of 19:01 and 19:04, respectively.
The ability of Duke's other runners to post quality times proved crucial to its ability to battle with the elite teams in the field.
"Just having a front-runner is not going to make us a great team if we can't run close two through five," Ogilvie said. "The four of them talked through the course of the race to help each other through it.
"Megan took off with a kilometer to go. She's got an incredible kick; she just went for it and passed probably 25 people in the last kilometer."
A legitimate front-runner and a group of solid runners gives the Blue Devils reasons to think big. And for a team that has never even received a vote in the top-25 polls and sent its first individual ever to the NCAAs just last year, that type of thinking is no longer a far-fetched idea.
"We come away from the meet with confidence that we could be better than we are now," Ogilvie said. "We could compete with anybody right now.
"The coaching staff and the athletes knew we were going to be pretty good. But we as a team need to go out and prove we're good. Talk is cheap. Yesterday, we proved we belong."
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