Although their finishes may not show it, the men's and women's track teams' scores at the ACC Indoor Championships reflected solid progress. Both squads scored more points than ever before at the event in Blacksburg, Va., with the men finishing seventh and the women finishing ninth.
"The program continues to make progress," said men's associate coach Norm Ogilvie of his team. "In 1991, we scored zero points, last year we scored 30 and this year we scored 40."
The distance medley relay provided the most points for the men's and women's teams, as both won the event and set meet records.
The women also set a school record and made the NCAA provisional time. After the first three legs, ran by sophomores Maddy Woodmansee, Courtney Botts and Heather Ryan, the women trailed North Carolina and were even with Wake Forest.
Freshman Sheela Agrawal, running the anchor leg, found herself tied with Demon Deacon miler Jill Snyder, whose personal best of 4:41 is an automatic NCAA qualifying time and beats Agrawal's personal best by 10 seconds.
But somehow Agrawal managed to catch the UNC runner less than halfway through the race and hold off Snyder the whole way to give Duke the victory. Agrawal, who had already run the mile once that day in the event preliminaries, finished with a personal-best 4:46.1 split time.
"Knowing their personal bests, you would think, 'Good luck,'" Ogilvie said of Agrawal's chances entering the anchor leg. "But Sheela had an awesome, awesome race. She just kept right on [Snyder]. She wasn't intimidated at all and she successfully held her off."
In the mile race, Agrawal finished in fourth place in 4:53.39, trailing Snyder by two seconds.
The women set two other school records at the meet. Jillian Schwartz continued to make progress in the pole vault, finishing third with a jump of 11' 10". Freshman Jenna Turner, running in only her third 400-meter race ever, set a new school record of 56.7.
The only bad spot for the women's team was the 4x400 relay. Early in the race, Turner fell to the ground in a collision. The team finished seventh, but based on their best-ever time of 3:50, the four runners could have placed third without the fall.
"The very fact that we could have gotten third is outstanding," Ogilvie said. "Seventh may be the highest we've finished anyway.
"Other than the fall in the relay, the girls definitely exceeded expectations. The basic consensus among the ACC coaches was, 'Wow, the Duke women are getting a lot better.'"
On the men's side, Mike McKeever, James Vasak, Kyle Leonard and Terry Brennan led the entire distance medley relay, finishing the event in 9:53.81 and crushing second-place Clemson by four seconds.
Pole vaulter Seth Benson nearly won an event himself. Benson set a personal best and a new school record by clearing 16' 19 1/2" Saturday. Brent Callaway of UNC cleared the identical height but won the event because he had posted fewer misses.
One of the most poignant moments in the meet came in the 3000 meters, when senior Tim Schafer lowered his own personal best by 10 seconds and became third all-time for Duke in that event. Schafer finished fifth in 8:26.25, qualifying for the IC4As by three seconds.
"It was one of the more thrilling moments of the afternoon for Duke," Ogilvie said. "It was wonderful to see Tim run a race like that."
The men's and women's track teams return to Blacksburg next weekend for the Virginia Tech Last Chance meet.
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