When the Blue Devils traveled to Blacksburg, Va. this weekend, they knew it would not be long before they would return to Virginia Tech for this season’s ACC Championships. After a dominating performance in its season-opening meet, Duke can only hope to replicate such a performance on their return trip.
Sweeping both the team and individual titles on the men’s and women’s sides, the Blue Devils cruised past Virginia, Virginia Tech, Liberty and Radford at this year’s Virginia Tech Invitational.
“This was a great tune-up meet for us. We’re very pleased,” men’s head coach Norm Ogilvie said. “It doesn’t look like everybody ran their best lineup here so we don’t want to get complacent, but it’s definitely a good starting point.”
Shaun Thompson placed first out of 60 runners for the men, completing his 6K race in 18:25.68. After Virginia’s Ed Schrom finished second, the next six runners to cross the line all competed for the Blue Devils. Junior Brian Atkinson, graduate student James Kostelnik and seniors Dominick Robinson and Domenick DeMatteo rounded out the top five competitors for Duke, who finished first as a team with 19 points, well ahead of the score of 55 posted by second-place Liberty.
Senior Juliet Bottorff, who was the Outdoor NCAA Champion in the women’s 10K in 2011, did not disappoint in her first cross country race since her sophomore season. Leading the way for the Duke women, Bottorff won the women’s 4K race with a time of 13:38.75, breaking away from the other 65 members of the field to take the race by 23.02 seconds. The Blue Devils swept the top five spots in the race and finished with 15 points, cross country’s equivalent of pitching a shutout. Duke runners made up the top nine finishers in the women’s race.
“Obviously she’s one of the best runners in the country. She showed that today,” Ogilvie said.
Although more experienced runners led the way for the Blue Devils, both teams’ freshman runners made contributions in their first collegiate races. For the women, Olivia Anderson was Duke’s top newcomer, finishing seventh overall with a time of 14:26.24. The Blue Devil men, who have a large freshman class of six runners this season, had strong performances from Daniel Moore and William Rooney, who finished seventh and eighth, respectively.
Duke’s coaching staff hopes their new runners will proceed with confidence after their successful performance at Virginia Tech.
“It’s really important because we feel like we’ve got a great top four or five guys, but it’s always great to have depth,” Ogilvie said. “That’s what we’re hoping these freshmen can provide for us, if one of our older guys has an off day the freshmen can step up, and we won’t miss a beat.”
The Blue Devils will continue to ramp up their training in the coming weeks as they approach more competitive races at the end of September, but hope the experience of competing in Blacksburg will serve the team well when it returns for the ACC Championships Oct. 27. With only three ACC schools competing at the Virginia Tech Invitational, the Blue Devils aim to get a leg up on the competition after having experienced the course already this season.
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