Both the men and the women headed into this past weekend’s meets with high expectations. Unfortunately, both programs fell just short.
The women traveled to the Penn State National Invitational Friday looking to take the second-place spot as a team. The Blue Devils, though, were edged by both Connecticut and Penn State, who took second and third, respectively.
“I think that if we had a little bit of a better day overall as a team, getting second would’ve been pretty easily attainable for us,” junior Madeline Morgan said. “So it wasn’t quite as well as we were expecting overall as a team, but we were still happy with being in the top four on an average day.”
The Duke women were led to their fourth-place finish by Morgan, who took seventh overall with a time of 21:26. Senior Suejin Ahn followed her across the finish line just nine seconds later to take second for the Blue Devils while her classmate Esther Vermeer grabbed third with her 21:51 finish. The last senior to finish for Duke was Amanda Truelove, who took fourth for the team and 23rd overall in her season debut. Shortly afterwards, freshmen Colleen Schmidt and Julianna Miller, along with sophomore Gabby Levac rounded out the team’s top-seven finishers.
“Our main goal is to have more people step up and to focus on being more mentally tough,” Morgan said. “We still have a lot of work to do, but the potential is there and its just about getting that to come across in races.”
At the Panorama Farms Invitational in Virginia, the men’s meet paralleled the women’s. The team was looking to defend its first-place finish from the 2010 season, but proved unable to do so after a pair of its top-seven runners suffered from unexpected setbacks.
The Blue Devils headed into the meet without three of their more experienced athletes—senior James Kostelnik, junior Mike Moverman and sophomore Clint McKelvey—who have been unable to compete for most of the season due to injuries. And after back pain slowed senior Stephen Clark and freshman Morgan Pearson, the team lost its hoped-for first-place finish.
“The difference between this year’s team and last year’s team is that we don’t have the depth,” men’s head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “In every meet you can find somebody that had an off day, but last year we had guys who would step in and fill their places.”
The results were not all negative, however. Junior Domenick DeMatteo led the Blue Devils for the first time with his seventh-place finish overall and senior Andrew Brodeur came in just two seconds behind him to take eighth. The third man for the Blue Devils, sophomore Brian Atkinson, came in 10th, putting three Duke runners in the top-10. Senior Josh Brewer and freshman Shaun Thompson followed shortly afterwards to complete Duke’s top five, taking 16th and 18th overall, respectively.
“I don’t think we were confident as a team going into [the meet],” Pearson said. “We’ve had a couple good workouts but we really haven’t raced well yet. As a team we still have something to prove to ourselves.”
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