For the fifth straight time this season, the top-ranked women's cross country team came out of a quality meet with a win. This particular victory, however, earned the Blue Devils an automatic trip to the NCAA Championships.
Duke secured its second consecutive NCAA Southeast Regional title Saturday when it scored 33 points to top its closest opponent, N.C. State, by 45 points at the race held in Greenville, N.C.
Senior Shannon Rowbury won the 6K race in 19:55.2, followed closely by fellow senior and runner-up Clara Horowitz, who finished 3.9 seconds later. Rowbury's individual title marks her fourth straight this season.
"Obviously we weren't racing 31 of the top teams in the country," head coach Kevin Jermyn said. "But our region is quite possibly the best in the nation. We ran today against some of the best runners in the country. It's really helped them gain experience and confidence."
Jermyn said the race began at a slower pace than in the past and that Rowbury, Horowitz and senior Sally Meyerhoff kept pace with the leading pack for the first three kilometers. Between the 3K and the 5K mark, the pack began to spread out until Rowbury and Horowitz shared the lead with 1,000 meters to go. Rowbury pulled out the victory in the final 100 meters.
Meyerhoff's 20:16.9 time and senior Liz Wort's 20:35.7 time earned the Blue Devils sixth and 10th place finishes. Senior Natasha Roetter, who suffered a fall midway through the race, crossed the finish line in 16th with a 20:52.2 time.
"This weekend we really accomplished a lot of individual breakthroughs," Jermyn said. "Sally ran a much better race than she did at ACCs. She was able to stay with the lead pack for longer."
In another type of breakthrough, this weekend's Duke lineup was missing its usual third and fourth runners, freshman Whitney Anderson and senior Laura Stanley.
The pair was replaced in the meet by the Blue Devils' eighth and ninth runners, senior Kelly Fillnow and freshman Maddie McKeever.
"We had a very good outing," head coach Kevin Jermyn said. "We rested our third and fourth finishers to focus on the NCAA Championships. We knew we should be able to qualify even if we rested a few people."
Fillnow was the fifth Duke harrier to cross the finish line in 20:49.0 to grab 14th place, while McKeever rounded out Duke's scoring in 26th with a 21:12.6 time.
Jermyn said that he rested Anderson and Stanley during this qualifying meet so they could focus on the NCAA Championship meet and so Fillnow and McKeever could gain race experience at Saturday's meet, which included a high level of competition.
Fillnow will travel with the team to Terre Haute, Ind., for the NCAA Championships Nov. 21 as an alternate. Duke's top seven runners-Rowbury, Horowitz, Meyerhoff, Wort, Roetter, Anderson and Stanley-will compete in hopes of winning their sixth, and most challenging, meet of the season so far. Last year's team finished in second place at the NCAA Championships.
"We're really pumped up," Jermyn said. "We're excited with this win, but we're quickly moving on and focusing on what's ahead."
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