It was a bittersweet performance for cross country this weekend. Saturday, Duke's top-seven men and women runners competed at the 2003 Pre-NCAA preview meet in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Despite several strong individual efforts, the men's team finished 18th out of 35 teams, and an injury-plagued women's squad placed 12th out of 32 teams.
The meet, which pitted the Blue Devils against several of the nation's top squads, served as Duke's final warm-up before the ACC Championships and the NCAA Regional and National Championships.
The highlight of men's competition was the performance of junior Michael Hatch. Hatch finished with a final time of 23:56 on the 8K course, good for 17th place overall, tops among all ACC runners. When asked about Hatch, head coach Norm Ogilvie gushed that "the outstanding effort from Hatch...definitely puts him in the running as a serious threat to winning the ACC individual title."
Ogilvie was also equally impressed by the "very, very good effort" of senior Chris Williams, who had not raced since last year's NCAA Championships, but finished 98th in his first race in nearly 11 months.
The women's team's 12th-place finish was especially remarkable considering it was without two of its best runners. Sophomore Sally Meyerhoff was unable to compete after throwing out her back jogging the course before the race, and Natasha Roetter was sidelined by asthma.
Nevertheless, the Duke women received strong performances from sophomore Laura Stanley and junior Paige Miller, who finished 43rd and 49th respectively with times of 21:21 and 21:29 on the 6-K course.
"When you lose two of your top runners, it's tough to compete." Ogilvie said."If we had all of our runners healthy, we would become one of the top units in the ACC, if not the entire NCAA."
Duke also competed at the N.C. Intercollegiate Championships in Greenville, N.C. Saturday. Junior Paris Edwards impressed many with her 19th-place finish in18:02.11 on the 4.9-K course. Junior Ian Cronin finished 13th overall on the 8-K course, posting a time of 24:31.93 and earning a spot as the 8th runner in Duke's next meet, the ACC Championships Nov. 1 in Winston-Salem, N.C.
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