With indoors competition winding down before a flurry of spring outdoor events, the track and field team competed this weekend in Blacksburg, Va., at the Virginia Tech Last Chance meet.
And for Duke track, the meet provided both the men's and women's team a last chance at breaking some school records.
Sheela Agrawal, whose feats have her ranked 18th in the nation, took second in the women's mile run with a time of 4:46.41, shattering a 4:51.08 record she had set earlier this month against Army.
"Overall, the race went pretty well," Agrawal said. "I was trying to qualify for NCAAs. The provisional time is 4:49.4 and I ran 4:46.41. So I was kind of in between the automatic and the provisional time-the automatic time was 4:43.4. I was pretty happy overall with my race. I have to work on getting stronger in the second half."
Joining Agrawal at the top this weekend was Katie Atlas, whose 2:12.27 for the 800-meter run garnered fifth place. The time qualified Atlas for the ECAC Championships next weekend.
Agrawal looks forward to the indoor championships and believes she might have the inside track, noting that as a Massachusetts native, she's quite familiar with the race site, the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
But the women's team wasn't the only one celebrating shattered records.
On the men's side, the distance relay team of Mike McKeever, James Vasak, Kyle Leonard and Bill Spierdowis placed first with a record-breaking 9:43.65. The new time smashes a 19-year-old record.
During this week leading up to the IC4A Championship, Vasak noted that the key was to continue their consistency.
"[We'll be] freshening up our legs a little bit," he said. "We're going to be working on our speed.... We all ran pretty well, so we're just looking to make sure we're feeling good going into this weekend."
Men's associate coach Norm Ogilvie said that the implications of continued success could vault his team into the NCAAs.
"We are very close to being selected for the NCAA," he said. "That's certainly the main goal of the four guys in this relay. They generally choose the top-ten fastest teams in the country and that time ranks us somewhere around 13 or 14th best in the nation."
Note: In a separate event this weekend, Mike Zulandt competed at Liberty University's Rams Spider Invitational. Zulandt took 3577 points to take first in the pentathlon event, qualifying him for the IC4A meet next weekend.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.