For most of us, getting out of the cellar requires nothing more than a set of stairs. For the men's and women's indoor track teams, it took several record-setting performances.
At this weekend's Atlantic Coast Conference Championships, both Blue Devil squads shook their accustomed burden-the ninth-place finish.
The improvement, in which the men finished sixth and the women seventh, came on the strength of two broken school bests from the women's distance runners and a tied men's team record in the pole vault.
Overall, the women's title went to North Carolina and the men's to Florida State.
Duke outdid Maryland and Clemson on the women's end; the men's team bested Wake Forest, Virginia and Maryland.
"This was a great weekend for Duke," men's head coach Norm Ogilvie said. "By all rights, we should be finishing ninth every year, as we're going up against schools with greater scholarship support."
The first record to be smashed for the weekend came Friday, in the women's 5,000-meter run, when freshman speedster Clara Horowitz came in at a stingy 16:27.70 in her first time competing in the event at a collegiate level.
The freshman earned a third-place finish, six points and a Duke record. She eclipsed the 16:29.54 mark set by Sheela Agarwal in 2002, and joined Agarwal as the only Blue Devil women ever to break 17 minutes in the event.
Adding to the impressiveness of her feat, Horowitz was only a week removed from acquiring her national title in the Junior National Cross Country championships last Saturday.
Saturday saw another women's record fall, when freshman Shannon Rowbury became only the fifth Duke woman ever to break the five-minute mile indoors, clocking in at 4:42.45.
In so doing, she earned a second place finish behind Carolina's Shalane Flanagan, an automatic NCAA bid, and another Blue Devil record. Rowbury bested the previous record, 4:43.45, set two years ago by Katie Atlas.
"I knew I wouldn't run [the mile] again until Nationals, so I wanted to qualify automatically," Rowbury said. "That was at the back of my mind the whole time."
The pole vault record was matched Saturday by Brent Warner, whose performance lifted him from third into a tie for first in the Duke record books. His 16' 9.5" vault tied the record set by Warner's friend and mentor, Seth Benson, three years ago.
"I was looking to better my third-place finish from last year and get a new personal best," Warner noted. "If I'd won, I'd have been real happy, but those were my goals."
Warner achieved his goals, finishing second and outdoing his old personal record by 4.75 inches.
Not all of Duke's impressive performances set records. Warner, Nick Schneider and Donny Fowler all qualified for the All-ACC team, constituted of each event's top three finishers.
Schneider earned a third in the mile, and Fowler was third in the 800-meter run.
"We don't have the same depth as teams like UNC," Rowbury said. "But we did a great job in the events where we were strong.
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