Thompson finishes 95th at NCAA championships in final race for Duke cross country

Duke had not sent a representative to the national championships since 2012, but after achieving his goal of qualifying with an automatic berth, graduate student Shaun Thompson concluded his final season in a Blue Devil uniform on collegiate cross country’s biggest stage.

Thompson finished 95th out of 252 runners at the NCAA championships Saturday, covering the 10-kilometer course at E.P. 'Tom' Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Ky., in 30:55.2. The Duke harrier started the race in the middle of the pack, passing the 2,000-meter mark in 112th and a split time of 5:54.2. Then the Baldwinsville, N.Y., native seemed to hit his stride. Passing 62 runners in the next 3,200 meters, Thompson was 10 spots and six seconds behind the top 40 at the 5,200-meter mark, posting a split time of 15:30.1.

But that was as close as the Blue Devil got to his goal of All-America honors. His back started to tighten up, leaving him in pain for the remainder of the race.

“Once you start, you can’t stop and stretch something out,” Thompson said. “You have to grit your teeth and keep pushing through. And that’s what I kept doing.”

Thompson fell back in the second half of the racing, dropping to 76th by the eight-kilometer mark. The graduate student fought to finish in the top 100, racing through the final 2,000 meters in 6:34.0 to cross the line in 95th.

“We didn’t have the day we were looking for,” Duke head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “It doesn’t take away from the fact that he had one of the best seasons in Duke history, capped off by the best race I’ve seen at the Southeast Regional—and I’ve seen guys win the ACC title.”

Although the team captain finished short of his goal for the race, his individual performances have been the best by a Blue Devil in three years, and his leadership sparked dramatic improvement in the team’s season.

Duke moved up four spots in the conference standings from 2014 to 2015 and finished 10th at the Southeast Regional championships after not fielding a full team for last season’s contest.

“As a whole, I’m really happy with how the season went,” Thompson said. “I got the team in a better spot in terms of stepping up and growing more. I’m going to miss them a lot. But I’m going to be there to help them when they call on me.”

Thompson ran the best race of his career to earn his spot in Saturday’s championship, finishing second at the Southeast Regional championships Nov. 13 in Charlottesville, Va.

Saturday’s race marks Thompson’s last competition until March, when he will begin his final outdoor track season for Duke, but Ogilvie and his protégé already have their eyes set on Thompson’s next goal: qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the 10,000 meters.

“I’m not going to let this race get the better of me,” Thompson said. “My dad says, ‘Sometimes the hunter gets the bear but sometimes the bear gets the hunter.’ And I’ve been hunting all season. But I’m not going to let this one stop me.”