Wind, rain and a slip near the starting line could not keep Shaun Thompson from making a triumphant return to the race course.
Thompson claimed the individual win in the eight-kilometer race at the inaugural Princeton Inter-Regional Meet in Princeton, N.J., leading the Blue Devils to a sixth-place team finish on the men’s side. The Duke women, paced by Madison Granger, finished eighth.
Thompson, a graduate student, finally got his chance to finish a race after six months without competing and after a promising performance was cut short by lightning at the Hokie Invitational Sept. 4. Heading into a meet at which all other competitors had at least one race under their belts, Thompson’s only frame of reference for his fitness following his redshirt year was his practice performance.
“We do a workout that we call the Al Buehler workout where we go six times a mile with one every eight minutes,” Duke men’s head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “And he averaged 4:41 for that. Usually whatever you can do for that is realistic to try to achieve for a race. And that’s what he did, and he did it by himself. Once he took the lead, he never looked back.”
The Baldwinsville, N.Y., native took the lead about a half-mile into the race. He registered a 4:39 split at the first mile and again at the second mile and dropped back to 4:48 and 4:53 for his third and fourth mile before his kick carried him to a final mile split of 4:35. Averaging 4:44 per mile, Thompson finished in 23:34.9, nearly 30 seconds ahead of Virginia Tech’s Thomas Curtin.
“He dominated today,” Ogilvie said. “He ran what I would call an All-American type performance.”
Sophomore Alec Kunzweiler was the next Blue Devil across the line, finishing in 33rd with a time of 24:33.4. Daniel Moore and Blake Udland kept pace with Kunzweiler, crossing the line in 24:34.3 and 24:38.4 and placing 34th and 37th, respectively.
Racing eight kilometers for the first time in their careers, freshman Stephen Garrett and sophomore Jordan Burton both crossed the line in less than 25 minutes, with Garrett stopping the clock at 24:46.7 and Burton at 24:49.9. Sophomore Stephen Shine rounded out Duke's scoring seven—the Briarcliff, N.Y., native finished in 24:50.4, good for 52nd place.
“Our big goal was to get out and be competitive,” Ogilvie said. “Duke was leading the race at the mile mark and the three-mile mark. We just weren’t able to finish it off. When the other teams started kicking in the fourth mile, we couldn’t hang with them so we dropped back a bit. And that’s not surprising since…all the other schools have had at least one serious race, so we weren’t quite as sharp as everybody else.”
No.19 Indiana captured the team title with 47 points, well ahead of Duke's 148. No. 29 North Carolina earned 173 points and seventh place.
On the women’s side, Granger led the Duke contingent across the line for the second time this season after her third-place finish at the adidas XC Challenge Sept. 18. Granger posted a personal-best time in her first six-kilometer race of the season, finishing 13th overall in 21:18.0.
Freshman Sheridan Wilbur and senior Anima Banks paced each other throughout the race to earn 30th and 35th in 21:48.6 and 21:52.6, respectively. Freshman Kim Hallowes and senior Olivia Anderson took the fourth and fifth scoring positions for the Blue Devils with times of 22:16.6 in 62nd and 22:33.8 in 74th.
The women’s squad finished eighth overall with 199 points, outscoring Wake Forest by nine. Princeton claimed the overall team victory with 80 points, and North Carolina was runner-up with a total of 90 points.
Duke will resume competition Friday with the Royals Challenge in Charlotte, N.C., sending a small squad of runners who will not be competing at the NCAA Pre-Nationals meet the following weekend in Louisville, Ky.
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