After a string of successful races, Duke’s men and women had high hopes going into the ACC Championships in Chestnut Hill, Mass., Saturday. Even with their recent impressive performances, though, neither team was able to pull off the win Saturday at the Franklin Park course.
For the women, who finished in third place, the results were disappointing.
“I wanted to be in the top five,” junior Carly Seymour said. “I thought that [as a team] we could have gotten at least second.”
According to Seymour, the team still needs to improve. The women, who hoped to be competitive with winner Florida State, finished just behind second-place Virginia instead after running what they described as a disappointing race.
The Blue Devils’ front-runner, sophomore Juliet Bottorff, finished in 13th. Sophomore Madeline Morgan came in just four seconds behind her with a time of 20:49.2. Both runners earned All-ACC honors as a result of their top-14 finishes.
“I don’t think that our team is aggressive enough,” Seymour said. “We have the talent and capability, we just need to execute it in races.”
The men’s team was unhappy with its performance as well, as it took fifth place instead of the hoped-for first. The depth which had previously allowed the Blue Devil men to capture come-from-behind wins seemed to be lacking this meet, with Duke unable to match Florida State’s deep roster.
Despite this, Duke’s No. 1 runner, senior Bo Waggoner, did run a time of 23:43.9 to finish in fifth. As a result of his All-ACC performance, he became the first runner under men’s head coach Norm Ogilvie to finish in the top 14 at the ACCs for four years straight.
“Bo ran himself an All-American type race,” Ogilvie said. “He deserves a lot of credit for that.”
Unfortunately, many of the other runners on the men’s team did not have such a good race, and with only twelve points separating second through fifth place, it was enough to drag Duke down.
“There were a few disappointing performances,” Ogilvie said. “It was not a tragedy, we’re still a very good team, but this will allow us to refocus.”
The Duke men will take the worse-than-expected results as motivation to do better in upcoming meets. They now continue their training in preparation for the NCAA Southeast Regional Nov. 13.
“We would have loved to have won,” Ogilvie said. “But we have full confidence that we will come back really strong and run well at the regional meet.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.