As the school year wraps up, Duke’s season is far from finished.
With the team split between Atlanta and Walnut, Calif., the Blue Devils notched four total event wins at the Georgia Tech Invite and Mt. Sac Relays, with highlight performances from redshirt junior Teddi Maslowski, freshman Tanner Johnson and junior Robert Rohner in their multi-event season debuts.
Breaking three school records en route to her final score of 5,706 points in the heptathlon, Maslowski now ranks in the nation’s top 10 in the event and just outside the top 10 in the long jump.
“The conditions were excellent, that’s what we came out here for,” assistant coach Shawn Wilbourn said day. “Our goal was to get an NCAA-qualifying mark. Teddi has been in a rhythm and came out here and competed well. She’s been getting better and better every year and all the hard work is paying off. The sky is the limit for her.”
The Burgettstown, Pa., native opened the two-day competition Wednesday in Walnut with personal bests in all four events. She broke her first Duke record in the course of the competition with a 13.38-second performance in the 100-meter hurdles.
Maslowski followed up a strong showing in the first event with career bests in the high jump and shot put, recording marks of 5 feet, 4 1/2 inches and 34 feet, 10 1/2 inches, respectively. She wrapped up the day clocking 23.91 seconds in the 200 meters and moving up from 11th to seventh with 3,411 points heading into Thursday’s final three events.
Once again, Maslowski started the day off with a program record.
Landing at 20 feet, 5 1/4 inches on her first attempt in the long jump, the redshirt junior broke her own record. But she jumped three inches further on her second attempt with a mark of 20 feet, 8 1/2 inches to rewrite the record books once again.
In the javelin throw, Maslowski recorded a personal best of 107 feet, 8 inches. She capped the competition with a time of 2:20.34 in the 800 meters—the only event in which she did not record a personal best.
Maslowski's total score of 5,706 points was good for eighth overall.
Johnson and Rohner also turned in strong performances in the men’s decathlon, finishing 10th and 16th, respectively.
In the first decathlon of his career, Johnson gave standout performances Thursday in the final five events—the 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and 1,500 meters. The freshman jumped up three spots on the scoreboard from Wednesday, finishing with a final score of 7,173 points.
Rohner, who sat out the indoor season, wrapped up the competition with a solid score of 6,399 points.
“[Tanner] did a tremendous job of handling the mental aspect of the competition and finished with a score that is very impressive for a freshman,” Wilbourn said. “Robert is still a little bit raw, but this was a good learning experience against some of the top competition in the nation.”
The California group saw continued success Friday with sophomore Madeline Kopp winning the women’s 200-meter sprint in 53.12 seconds and freshman Madison Heath posting the top mark in the women’s pole vault open B event with a personal best of 13 feet, 9 1/4 inches.
In Atlanta, throwers Erica Brand and Stephen Boals produced the highlights of the weekend. Brand threw for 175 feet, 7 inches on her fifth attempt in the discus, recording a season-best mark and outscoring the competition by more than 13 feet for the win Saturday.
Boals earned his fourth win of the season in the shot put Friday, throwing a mark of 58 feet, 6 1/2 inches—a quarter-inch short of his personal best.
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