Blue skies, sun shining, a brisk breeze whipping red and orange leaves around campus-in every way imaginable, Monday afternoon was 100 percent autumn.
Except to Megan Sullivan. To this particular Duke senior, it could have just as easily been winter because the fall cross country season was all but dead.
Before leaving her Central Campus apartment, Sullivan had received the call from her coach, Jan Samuelson-Ogilvie. It was a call telling Sullivan that her run as captain of the women's cross country team was at the proverbial finish line. A third straight trip to the NCAA Championships was not yet out of the question, but the coaching staff wanted to make sure Sullivan realized "it didn't look promising."
But then a second phone call by Samuelson-Ogilvie, this time to the NCAA selection committee, breathed new life into the Blue Devils. Into a pre-practice team meeting strolled Sullivan, who optimistically donned her runner's garb in the hopes that her season would continue. And that is when she and her teammates were given the news: they would be leaving this weekend for Ames, Iowa to once again race against the elite runners of the nation Monday in the NCAA Championships. For Sullivan, who will become the first Duke woman ever to race three straight years at the cross country championships, it was a moment that Samuelson-Ogilvie could only describe as one of exhilaration.
"It feels great," Sullivan said. "I feel this is a gift for me. It's an opportunity to end my career at nationals, which a lot of people don't get to do."
It would have been a rather unsettling development had the Blue Devils been excluded from NCAAs after a successful season with only one senior on the roster. But it would have been even more difficult to swallow after, only one day prior, Duke had used some fancy math to figure out it was on its way to Ames.
"It was 48 excruciating hours; we thought Sunday morning we had figured out the formula and we were in as the 31st team," said Samuelson-Ogilvie, who explained she was then disheartened by another report that indicated Duke was the 32nd team, which would have left it one spot short of joining the 31-team field at NCAAs. "We were biting nails until we called people on the committee on Monday afternoon."
The wait was not nearly as anxious for Duke's men's cross country team. No. 19 Duke had every reason to expect an invitation following a long-awaited ACC title and a third-place performance at last weekend's district race.
For the Blue Devil men, it was not whether they would be asked to Ames, but how well they will do once they get there. One year after they crossed the finish line in 26th place, the Blue Devils were not included in the NCAA field last season. With its most talented core of runners ever up front, Duke is primed for what could be its best performance at nationals in history.
"The guys on the team are very excited," men's coach Norm Ogilvie said. "They know that we could culminate the most successful season Duke cross country has ever had. They have shown remarkable success so far this year, but they definitely want to go out with a great performance at the NCAA meet."
Senior leaders Terry Brennan, Sean Kelly and Brendan Fitzgibbon underscore the biggest factor in Duke's dramatic rise to national prominence. Both Brennan and Kelly, who finished one-two at the Southeast regionals, have legitimate shots at being All-Americans, while Fitzgibbon could attain that status with a spectacular race. Together, the trio of front-runners has provided Duke with enough stability to shoot for a possible top-10 finish in the national rankings.
"We have every reason to believe we can be top 15," Ogilvie said. "If we have a great race, we might even be able to be top 10, but top 15 is a very worthy goal."
While the A teams for both the men and women will be awaiting Monday's Championships, the B teams will have their own championship race this weekend. Tomorrow, Duke will have seven men and seven women in the Bronx, N.Y., where the IC4As and ECACs are set to get underway a little bit later in the season than usual. The men have finished third at the IC4As the last three years, while the women are the defending ECAC champions. This year, however, with the NCAA Championships only two days after the IC4As and ECACs, the Blue Devils will rely on their second teams to continue their recent success.
"We may not be able to do that well this time, but we'll be competitive with our B squad," Ogilvie said. "We're really happy that it lets the rest of the team have a championship meet at the end of the year."
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