While their male counterparts were celebrating their first conference title in more than two decades, the Duke women left Raleigh with a somehow-lacking fourth-place finish at Saturday's ACC Championships.
Although the Blue Devils have never finished as high as fourth place in this race, coach Jan Samuelson-Ogilvie was not satisfied.
"We were not pleased with our finish by any means," Samuelson-Ogilvie said. "Every single one of our women could have run better today."
The Blue Devils were defeated by intrastate rivals N.C. State, North Carolina and Wake Forest. The Wolfpack is the perennial top team in the ACC, although the Tar Heels won the conference last season. Duke beat N.C. State by one point at the Notre Dame Invitational early in October, but the Wolfpack was saving some of its top runners for these later races.
"N.C. State and UNC brought all of their big guns today," Samuelson-Ogilvie said.
As usual, the Blue Devils were led by star sophomore Sheela Agrawal. She finished third in a field of 69 runners with a time of 18:15.3. This performance was good enough to earn her a spot on the All-Conference team for the second consecutive season. Still, Agrawal was not happy with her performance.
"I was a little disappointed," she said. "Everyone has some good days and some bad days, and this was not one of my good ones."
Agrawal was defeated by one of her long-time rivals, UNC freshman Shalane Flanagan. Agrawal and Flanagan, both from Massachusetts, raced in high school and have already competed several times this year.
Flanagan finished in first place with a time of 17:38.1 and was named ACC freshman of the year for her performance.
Rounding out Duke's top-five runners were senior Megan Sullivan (16th place, 19:07.7), junior Katie Atlas (21st, 19:18.0), junior Maddy Woodmansee (30th, 19:30.7) and freshman Lisa Nagorny (36th, 19:35.9).
The next big test for the Blue Devils comes in two weeks at the NCAA Southeast Regionals in Greenville, S.C. The top three teams at that race receive automatic bids into the national championships, and the fourth-place team can also qualify depending on how it performed earlier in the year.
"We'll be ready in two weeks," Samuelson-Ogilvie said. "But we're running a little scared now and we need to come together as a team."
Regionals are also important for Agrawal individually. The top four individual finishers automatically qualify for nationals, and several at-large bids are also given. Last year as a freshman, Agrawal placed sixth at regionals before going on to finish 28th out of 300 runners at NCAAs.
"I would love to qualify for the individual race," Agrawal said. "But it's more important that the team makes it. We just need some confidence, some good workouts and some rest."
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