CHAPEL HILL - The women's cross country team is facing an uphill run heading into the NCAA Regionals in two weeks.
Hoping to solidify an at-large bid to the NCAA Championships, the Blue Devils suffered a setback with a fifth-place finish yesterday at the ACC Championships at North Carolina's Finley Course.
Duke finished with 104 points, 60 points higher than champion UNC. The top five teams finished reasonably close together, compared to the 59-point gap between the Blue Devils and sixth-place Clemson.
At the NCAA Regionals in two weeks, Duke will face many of these same teams again. While yesterday's finish leaves it in a difficult position, associate coach Jan Samuelson-Ogilvie believes her team still has an opportunity to make the NCAAs.
"Yes, it's disappointing, and we know we're better than what we showed today," the coach said. "We have to regroup, and we have two weeks to do it. In order to make NCAAs, we've got to beat a couple of the teams that beat us today.... If we can put things together in two weeks, we have a good chance."
The Blue Devils were led by All-ACC performers Megan Sullivan and Sheela Agrawal, who finished in fifth and sixth place, respectively. The sixth-place finish for Agrawal was her lowest all year. For Sullivan, though, the race marked a high point of a difficult year.
The junior has been dealing with an injury all year and is scheduled to undergo surgery as soon as the season is over. She still has to run with a brace, but that did not slow her down yesterday. In the race's final stretch, Sullivan emerged ahead of a pack of women to finish fifth.
"I feel like my training's been going really well lately and I'm psyched about these last two races," Sullivan said. "I wanted to be top 10 for this race and that was my main goal, and I definitely got there. I was playing cat-and-mouse with the pack of girls I was working with most of the race, then with 1,000 [meters] to go was when I started to kick it in."
But beyond their top two, the Blue Devils struggled. Several team members have been suffering through illness and end-of-season injuries that took their toll yesterday.
Maddy Woodmansee finished in 26th place, followed closely by Anne Wickman. Duke's lineup was rounded out by Ellie Culp (41st), Melissa Malakoff (53rd) and Katie Atlas (64th). Meanwhile, sophomore Heather Ryan, who has consistently placed in Duke's top five but was ill all week, could not even finish the race.
"We had a tough day," Samuelson-Ogilve said. "To have two in the top 10 is outstanding for us.... We've been holding people together a little bit with glue and paper. We've got some injuries that often pop up toward the end of a season. "The meet in two weeks is critical. What we've got to do is back our training off a little bit, get healthy and then I know we'll run better than we did today."
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