Blue Devils face first test in Minneapolis

This year, the Duke men were not awarded a national ranking. They will set out to prove Saturday that they deserve one.

Last year at the Roy Griak Invitational, the Blue Devils took home the team title in an upset victory. After losing talented runners like Bo Waggoner to graduation and experienced athletes like senior Josh Brewer and junior Mike Moverman to sickness and injury, however, they will find it hard to repeat that performance.

The Blue Devils will face stiff competition this weekend from three nationally-ranked schools—No. 10 Portland, No. 11 N.C. State and No. 24 Minnesota—plus outstanding individuals such as Stephen Sambu. Sambu, last year’s individual champion from the University of Arizona, will return to take another shot at the title. In the midst of all this, the Blue Devils will be racing to earn points toward qualifying for nationals, while seeing where they stand in their first fully competitive meet of the season.

“It’s a big meet for us,” head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “If we could run well this weekend that would be really big. We have a young group…. We know they’re training really well. The big question is, how are they going to perform?”

Four runners out of the nine traveling to the meet will be competing in the Griak Invitational for the first time. According to Ogilvie, one of them, freshman Morgan Pearson, will join more experienced runners Stephen Clark and Andrew Brodeur in vying for a top spot at the meet. And though they acknowledge the difficulty of this achievement, the Blue Devil men will head into the meet with confidence.

“I’m feeling really good, and I’m feeling good about the team overall,” Clark said. “We’ve had a few injuries…so we’re not taking ten [runners] like we originally thought. But in those guys that we are taking, I think we’ve got a really…strong group.”

Clark also mentioned his belief that this year’s squad shows the potential to produce more frontrunners than Duke has had in previous years. However, he pointed out that these athletes would have their work cut out for them as they headed into Saturday’s meet. Ogilvie was also cautious about expecting a top finish and said it was unlikely that Duke would be able to defend its title.

“I think it will be really tough to crack into the top four,” Ogilvie said. “But at least last year taught us that sometimes you can win when you’re not expecting it. So we’re going to try to run the best race that Duke can run. And we’ll see what happens.”