With a strong team performance in Friday’s conference championships, the Blue Devils are one step closer to their goal of earning a trip to Louisville, Ky.
The Duke men finished eighth overall at the ACC championships in Tallahassee, Fla., moving up four spots from last season’s finish, and the Blue Devil women claimed 11th.
Graduate student Shaun Thompson crossed the line first for Duke and came in sixth overall. Thompson and the lead pack broke away from the field around the five-kilometer mark and the Baldwinsville, N.Y., native kept pace with Virginia Tech’s Thomas Curtin and Syracuse’s Justyn Knight until the final kilometer. The pair gave an impressive kick to close out the race, and Curtin claimed the individual title by just more than second, finishing in 23:23.0.
Thompson stopped the clock at 23:40.4 and earned All-ACC honors for the second time in his career.
“He continues to be stellar, running only a few seconds off what he ran at Pre-Nationals and Princeton, even though it was considerably hotter today,” Duke head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “For Shaun to run that today shows how tough he is, and that he is for real. First-team All-ACC is quite an honor with the talent in this conference.”
After Thompson, a number of Duke harriers stepped up to carry their team to the finish Friday. Senior Blake Udland effectively secured the Blue Devils’ two-point win against North Carolina with a strong kick in the home stretch.
Udland fell just short of his goal of finishing in the top 21 to earn All-ACC honors, but moved up 10 positions over the back half of the course to finish 28th in 24:28.1.
“We beat our rival UNC, so we will definitely take that away from today,” Ogilvie said. “Blake ran a good race and really put it on the line. Catching those guys at the end really helped us. His last mile is undoubtedly the reason we got by UNC in the end.”
Freshman Stephen Garrett placed 50th overall, finishing in 24:57.1. Ogilvie said he was impressed by the freshman’s performance as he finished third for the Blue Devils in his first collegiate championship meet.
Sophomore Stephen Shine and junior Daniel Moore rounded out Duke’s top five, clocking in at 25:01.6 and 25:12.6, respectively.
All of the scoring Blue Devils kept an aggressive pace from the start, fighting for position at the front of the pack. Duke was fifth at the 3,000-meter mark but dropped back as the race progressed to finish eighth with a total of 187 points.
Syracuse won its third straight title with a team score of 46 points and N.C. State and Virginia rounded out the top three with 95 and 115 points, respectively.
On the women’s side, captain Madison Granger—a top-three performer for Duke at every race this year—again posted a strong finish for the Blue Devils despite a sore Achilles tendon. The Belchertown, Mass., native still finished in the top 50, with a time of 21:30.5—good for 44th overall.
“She wanted to go out and run the best she could to help the team, knowing that there were two other girls we were having to sideline,” Duke women’s head coach Christine Engel said. “But she went out there and ran competitively even though she was in definite discomfort.”
Freshmen Sheridan Wilbur and Kim Hallowes were unable to compete Friday. Wilbur was running a fever of 103 degrees Wednesday night, so Engel elected to leave her in Durham to recover. Hallowes was sidelined with an IT band injury late this week.
Senior Anima Banks was the top-scoring Blue Devil for the first time this season. Holding a strong 5:40 mile pace, the captain moved up three spots from the three-kilometer mark to the finish to cross the line in 33rd at 21:12.0. Senior Olivia Anderson finished in the squad’s top three for the first time this season, finishing 52nd with a time of 21:40.9.
Crossing the line in 76th and 80th, freshmen Liz Lansing and Gabrielle Richichi contributed the final points toward Duke’s five-woman total of 275 points and its 11th-place finish.
Virginia claimed the women’s team title with 71 points, but N.C. State was not far behind with 75.
“Certainly this wasn’t what we had hoped for coming off our Pre-Nationals performance, but unfortunately there were things we could not control this week,” Engel said. “Our team finish doesn’t show the progress the team has made this season, but the girls who went out there really set the tone and had the best performances we were going to have today given the adversity.”
The Blue Devils will send some representatives to Cary, N.C., for the Three Stripe Invitational Nov. 7, and the rest of the squad will rest and prepare for the NCAA Southeast Regional championships Nov. 13.
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