Fresh off their win at Wake Forest two weeks ago, the Blue Devils are in for some tough competition this weekend as the men’s team heads to the Roy Griak Invitational while the women’s team will split and participate in both the Roy Griak and William & Mary Invitationals. Each team looks to accomplish separate goals—the men will try to work towards qualifying for nationals, and the women set out to gain a feel for the competition at these big meets.
On the men’s side, the competition at Roy Griak has increased significantly since last year, with seven nationally ranked teams, including No. 19 Duke, competing. As it heads into the first major meet of the season, head coach Norm Ogilvie said that despite the strength of the field, the Blue Devils will look for a win to move towards qualifying for Nationals in November. To make it there, the team either needs a top two finish in the NCAA Southeast Regional in mid-November or must accumulate enough points by beating ranked teams—which will be in ample supply at the Roy Griak Invitational.
“We need to finish fast and together, with a couple guys finishing in the top five to win,” Ogilvie said. “We’ve been training harder, and we’ve had five weeks so far, and it’s our first time to go all-out.”
The results from Wake Forest back up that statement as the top five Duke men finished one second apart, with senior Bo Waggoner in the back, despite him typically being the Blue Devils’ frontrunner.
“Our real weakness was not having an outstanding frontrunner [in the past]—[we’re] looking to improve that,” Ogilvie said. “Also, Duke is currently ranked 19th, so we’re going to see where we stand this weekend.”
Senior Josh Lund was optimistic about the upcoming meet, even with the increased level of competition.
“I know we will all be very disappointed if we don’t finish in the top four,” Lund said. “We believe we can win this.”
For women’s head coach Kevin Jermyn, team goals for this weekend’s meets are completely different. His team, he said, will not think about qualifying for Nationals this week. Instead, Jermyn is so confident in his team that he sees the meets as a way to gain experience for Nationals.
11 women are heading to the William & Mary Invitational with seven more joining the men at Roy Griak, but according to Jermyn the decision was not made based on performance so far.
“We are trying not to make coaching decisions until November when we pick the top seven to compete at Nationals,” Jermyn said. “We are not thinking about using this meet to qualify for Nationals at all, we are looking more to prepare as individuals here and looking to automatically qualify at Regionals. We try to make this the best experience for every runner... and one of our top seniors Emily Schwitzer is actually from that area so we wanted to give her a chance to run on her home turf.”
The eager outlook shared by both teams, albeit for different reasons, was best summed up by Lund.
“We are in the best shape of our lives and I am excited to see what we can do,” he said.
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