Some Blue Devils don’t take the weekend of fall break to relax.
Friday, the Duke women returned to Madison, Wis., for their second run in the Nuttycombe Invitational meet hosted by the Badgers. Junior fireball Amina Maatoug led the Blue Devils’ efforts with an 21st-place finish, headlining a result that placed Duke admirably among many of the nation’s best teams.
“Overall, it was a very, very solid day,” said head coach Angela Reckart. “That was an incredibly competitive field. We are definitely trending in the right direction.”
The Nuttycombe Invitational has been, for two seasons now, Duke’s last meet before the cross country ACC championships — at least for the women’s team. It’s a significant event for a number of reasons: The Blue Devils race far from home on a difficult course against some of the best programs in the nation, knowing the meet is their last chance to prepare for the conference final.
“We go there to learn so we can grow the program, so when we get to the national championships we feel confident that we can race in a field like that,” Reckart said.
Last year, the Blue Devil women wrapped up Nuttycombe in 32nd place. It was a meet that saw a couple moments of individual success but ultimate disappointment from the team perspective. This time around, however, things went a little better for everyone involved. Though the Duke women only tallied into 21st place — out of 33 teams — 19 of the 20 competitors that placed ahead of them rank in the top 30 teams nationally. With the exception of Harvard, which finished 19th, Duke raced against the strongest powerhouse teams from every corner of the country. On top of that, the women’s squad actually beat out No. 21 North Carolina, No. 14 Providence and No. 26 New Mexico. Considering the Blue Devils are unranked by the national coaches’ poll, this feat meant a lot to the program.
“We did beat some teams that we, on paper, were not supposed to,” said Reckart.
It isn’t a Duke meet if Maatoug isn’t at the helm. The junior sensation also improved upon her Nuttycombe time from last year, clocking 20:07.1 to last year’s 20:20.3. This 13-second improvement reigns particularly impressive on the Thomas Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course, which poses a difficult challenge in and of itself, in cold Wisconsin air on hilly grass and dirt.
“We executed our race plan almost near perfectly … It's always a learning curve running in a big field like that and navigating exactly where you are in the race,” Reckart said.
The Blue Devil men took Nuttycombe off, but Saturday morning, they raced against a packed crowd at the NCAA Pre-National meet in Charlottesville, Va., where they saw a mixed bag of teams from various parts of the country on the Panorama Farms Course.
“The men's team still has a lot of great momentum moving forward,” said Reckart. “So they're pretty hungry to go down to Tallahassee [for the ACC championship] and show the work that we've been putting in.”
The Duke squad largely stuck together for the duration of the 8k race. Graduate student Sam Rivera led the charge, clocking in at 24:15.8 to take 60th out of the 184 finishers. Three other Blue Devils stayed right on his heels: junior Carter Dillon in 70th, junior Beck Wittstadt in 76th and graduate student Zubeir Dagane in 78th — all finishing less than 10 seconds behind Rivera.
That pack mentality is something Reckart wants for her team, and something it did not execute well at its last showing at the Virginia Invitational. The downside to running as a group, however, is that when the chain is missing its fastest link — senior Austin Gabay — the rest of the pack is then working to keep up with a slower lead. Rivera finished honorably, but still nearly 20 seconds slower than his teammate did at Duke’s last meet on the Panorama Farms course.
Still, the Blue Devils improved significantly upon their results from the Virginia Invitational. Rivera knocked off nearly 18 seconds, while Dillon dropped 38 and Dagane shaved off 51. The Pre-National meet took place on the same course as the Invitational, meaning the runners who ran both meets had the advantage of familiarity this second time around.
“Overall everybody improved, we had some positive races for the guys,” said Reckart.
All in all, the Duke men took 11th place at the Pre-National meet. The other ACC teams represented in Charlottesville Saturday — Virginia, Virginia Tech and Pittsburgh — finished third, ninth and 19th, respectively.
That’s all she wrote for Duke’s regular season. The Blue Devils will take on the ACC championship meet in Tallahassee, Fla., Oct. 27.
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Sophie Levenson is a Trinity sophomore and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.