The 2005 IC4A champions are not content to end their season in the same way this year.
In 2006, Duke wants an NCAA bid.
Unable to garner an NCAA bid in 2005, Duke sent its top runners to the IC4A Championships-which head coach Norm Ogilvie described as the "NIT" of track and field-and came home with the Blue Devils' first IC4A cross country title. The win came shortly after a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Southeast Regional, with Duke falling short of an NCAA bid by two places.
Building on last year's performance, Duke hopes to make it to the next level this year.
"We narrowly missed an NCAA bid last year and certainly that's always going to be one of our top goals," head coach Norm Ogilvie said. "We definitely plan on being back in the NCAA Championships this year."
The young Blue Devil squad was somewhat inexperienced last year, but Duke graduated only one senior, leaving 11 experienced runners to compete in this year's meets. Duke also welcomed the addition of two of its top freshmen recruits- Tradelle Ward and Dan McManamon.
Ward, a Footlocker high achool All-American from Griswald, Conn., qualified as one of the top eight regional contenders to advance to the national high school championships, where he placed 14th as the top runner in Connecticut.
"He has a brilliant future ahead of him," Ogilvie said. "In practice, he's showed great maturity by not coming here and trying to show everybody he's No. 1."
Ward's new freshman teammate, McManamon, is the 2005 National Scholastics Indoor mile and 2006 New Balance Games mile champion from Clifton Park, N.Y.
Ogilvie gave the freshmen a two-week break after their high school seasons and then set them on a training schedule geared toward intercollegiate competition. The level of competition the pair will face as Blue Devils requires much greater strength and endurance than the high school level.
With the fall season ready to begin, Ogilvie is putting the entire team on a more conservative training schedule.
"We avoid the temptation to do speed work early in the year," Ogilvie said. "More mileage early, less quality early. Quality over a short period of time later in the season seems to work a lot better. We also want to keep our athletes mentally fresh."
The incoming freshmen will profit from the experience of the two co-captains, junior Chris Spooner and senior Keith Krieger, who have already affected changes early in the training program by keeping the group training as a cohesive unit.
"We would have people pushing and working really hard in workouts and overdoing it [last year]," Spooner said. "This time, we have people sticking together. All the seniors and other upperclassmen are doing workouts more like they're supposed to be done, not racing each other. We're keeping the freshmen where they need to be."
Ogilvie acknowledged the strength of ACC teams like Virginia, the defending conference champion, but he is confident Duke is able to holds its own in top-tier competition.
"We will go up against the best teams in the country," Ogilvie said. "We're not afraid to race anybody."
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