The women's cross country team traveled to Bloomington, Ind., yesterday to participate in its first-ever NCAA Championships. It returned to Durham in the wee hours of the morning boasting another monumental first.
Less than 30 seconds into the race, Sheela Agrawal was knocked to the ground and saw a blur of feet whip by as she scrambled to her feet. Seventeen minutes later, the feisty freshman crossed the finish line and became Duke's first women's cross country All-American.
"Sheela ran an absolutely fantastic race," coach Jan Samuelson-Ogilvie said.
Agrawal's 21st-place finish in 17:22 led Duke to 25th out of 31 teams with a point total of 572. After barely losing the NCAA title to Villanova last season, Brigham Young reclaimed the team championship it had won two years ago with a stellar 72-point performance, 53 points better than second-place Arkansas.
Wisconsin sophomore Erica Palmer was the surprise individual winner, finishing the race in 16:40 after only finishing third in her Great Lakes Regional race last week.
But for a Duke team that never received an invitation to the NCAAs before, just running with the nation's best proved to be quite an experience.
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"After the race, they really thought they belonged, and I think they're excited about the future of the program."
While the brightest star of the program's future stumbled early, Samuelson-Ogilvie had much bigger worries about the one runner who had been instrumental in the shaping of the program during her tenure.
After battling a severe ankle injury all season, junior Megan Sullivan came down with an illness last week. With precious few days left before the biggest race in the program's history, a strong possibility loomed that the team's second-best runner would not be able to even finish yesterday's race.
Sullivan, who had ankle surgery scheduled for this morning at 6 a.m., courageously fought off her painful injury and illness to finish in 83rd place as the second Duke runner with a time of 18:05. Sullivan actually improved on her performance from last year's NCAAs, when she had qualified as an individual.
"Considering all the circumstances, she ran awfully well," Samuelson-Ogilvie said of Sullivan. "It's been an ankle that's been bothering her for three years now and she's really undergone a lot of pain to get to where she's gotten."
Sophomore Maddy Woodmansee ran what Samuelson-Ogilvie said was the best race of Woodmansee's collegiate career, finishing in 133rd place with a time of 18:25. Sophomores Annie Wickman and Ellie Culp rounded out Duke's scoring by finishing 164th and 171st in the national meet, respectively.
Although the team feel short of its goal to sneak into the top 20, the Blue Devils still came away satisfied with the results. Duke was one of the youngest teams in the field with a freshman, five sophomores and a junior on its roster.
"If we had put everything together on the day, and if Megan had not been sick this week, and if a couple of the sophomores had run the way they did last week, we would have been a top-20 team," said Samuelson-Ogilvie. "But we ran well for today."
Note: Agrawal achieved All-American status, given to the top 30 finishers, by checking in at 21st among all competitors. Agrawal was also the fourth-fastest freshman in the meet.
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