Twelve days removed from their heartbreaking three-point defeat to Princeton at the IC4As, the Blue Devils now have their sight set on another demon of recent years. Next week at the ACC Championships in Chapel Hill, Duke will attempt to dethrone four-time reigning ACC champion N.C. State.
Last year's Blue Devil squad challenged the Wolfpack behind the legs of Tom Becker, who graduated last spring as the program's most dominating runner in recent memory. Becker's departure forced this year's team to adopt a new approach based on parity at the front rather than individual dominance to guide its success.
Behind the consistent running of seven strong runners, Duke has enjoyed depth that has helped it achieve high scores from top to bottom. While the Blue Devils expected to utilize depth as one of their main strengths coming into this season, they did not necessarily expect it to blossom behind two sophomores.
Yet, two of the keys to the Blue Devils' success have been the somewhat surprising performances of Jay Champi and Sean Kelly, who have both continually finished in the scoring column for Duke. Neither runner was in the pack of scorers last year as a freshman, but at last spring's indoor ACC track championships the two made a pact to work their way into the top five this year.
"Jay and I both wanted to commit ourselves to reaching this level," Kelly said. "Last year as freshmen, the mileage wore down on us and we didn't get to contribute as much as we wanted to. We both decided to work hard and make sure we were in shape for this season."
Despite their determination to break the top five, it appeared that this year's team would be led by last year's No. 2-5 runners, including seniors Charlie Kelly (no relation to Sean) and Tim Schaefer and juniors Terry Brennan and Brendan Fitzgibbon. That would have left only one spot for Champi and Sean Kelly to compete for, but Brennan suffered several injuries and illnesses while Fitzgibbon returned from a summer in Europe in poor physical condition.
While Brennan sat out the first two meets of the year and Fitzgibbon finished out of the scoring in the first three races, the sophomore duo of Kelly and Champi immediately moved into Duke's top five. Brennan and Fitzgibbon finally returned to the level the Blue Devils expected when they finished as Duke's top two runners at the IC4As, but that didn't slow down Champi or Kelly in the least.
The two sophomores finished within two seconds of each other in the four and five scoring spots for Duke, but most importantly, they helped Duke achieve an incredibly slim gap of 20 seconds between its first and fifth finishers.
Following last season, some may have guessed that Kelly would be in the mix this year to help pick up the slack for the Blue Devils, but not many would have made the same prediction about Champi.
"My times were not among the fastest last year," Champi said. "I was probably among the slowest in my class as a freshman. I started out as the 13th man and now I have moved up to fifth."
Now that both runners have solidified spots in the top five, Champi and Kelly will try to keep Duke's five-man spread as small as possible next week when they face their ACC cross country foes for the first time in their careers. Although neither is completely sure of what to expect next week, every runner on the Blue Devils' roster knows that the road to victory will have to go through N.C. State.
The third-ranked Wolfpack has dominated the event the last four years, including last year when it routed the second-place Blue Devils by a margin of 49 points. N.C. State has six returning members from last year's All-ACC team, but Duke refuses to concede anything to the Wolfpack.
With everyone but Becker back from last year's top five and Champi and Kelly both having great seasons, the Blue Devils believe that they can challenge N.C. State for supremacy atop the ACC.
"We can't go out and race for second," Champi said. "We have to go out and race to win against State. They are one of the best teams in the country right now, but we are going to run hard and hopefully build up some PR [to help earn an at-large bid to the NCAAs].
"We know State has a tough team so we're just hoping to give them hell."
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