Duke club sports primed for continued success in 2014-15

After hoisting trophies on the lacrosse field and the golf course last year, Duke athletic programs reached a total of 15 NCAA championships, but the stars of the university’s varsity teams are not the only champions and title contenders that you will find walking Duke’s campus.

Several of Duke’s 37 sports clubs placed highly at the national level since students wrapped up classes in April, and through recruitment during the summer and the first few weeks of classes, many of them have put themselves in position to contend for national titles. Overall, Duke athletes took home a championship in taekwondo, top-four finishes in men’s volleyball and women’s lacrosse and top-10 finishes in cycling and rowing.

For the Blue Devils’ martial arts program, recent graduate Abraham Lee won the National Collegiate Taekwondo Championship at the 68-kilogram weight class April 6 in Berkeley, Calif. Lee graduated in 2012 and spent a year training at Yongin University in South Korea before returning to compete with the Duke club through a final year of eligibility.

“He basically trained as an athlete for the year, but he came back and won nationals, and got to compete on the U.S. team last year,” club president Brian Pegno said. “That’s the first time anyone from Duke [has] ever won nationals.”

Although they will be without Lee this year, Pegno and his teammates have much to look forward to in the upcoming season. After missing last year due to injury, junior Eric Mastrolonardo will return to compete at the black-belt level.

Mentioned as one of the many talented incoming freshmen during University President Richard Brodhead’s welcome speech to the Class of 2016, Mastrolonardo earned bronze during his freshman campaign and will have a chance to improve upon that finish in 2015.

In addition to Mastrolonardo’s return, the club will benefit from training with a new coach. Taek Yong Kwak—a visiting professor who won the 1996 lightweight title at the World Military Taekwondo championships—will be working with the Blue Devils for the year.

“He is coming in...from Yongin University in Korea, which is one of the best taekwondo and martial arts universities in the world,” Pegno said. “It kind of just fell into our laps that he is coming here.... his resume is incredible—multiple-time world champion, coaches all the Olympians for Korea.”

Dessau will look to help the team return to the success of back-to-back national championships in the team trial in 2012 and 2013. Composed of mostly graduate students—including a Ph.D. candidate who raced professionally for a year prior to pursuing graduate work—the cycling club lost 2013 individual national champion and medical student Michael Mulvihill to graduation after the 2013 season and faced injuries to club president Jacob Miller and Jacob Timmerman during the 2014 campaign.

The injury-depleted team still placed sixth at Division II nationals, which features varsity squads as well as club teams, and had the opportunity to race in Richmond, Va., where the World Professional Cycling Championships will be held in 2015.

“It was a test event, which was a really fun thing for us,” Miller said. “When we watch the TV next year, we can say that we’ve done the same courses that the world pros will do. And the next two years we’ve lucked out again, because in 2015 and 2016 nationals will be in Asheville, N.C.—so a huge convenience for us, and [we're] hoping it’ll be an advantage.”

The team will likely have the opportunity to practice at the course during the year in its campaign to win another title this spring.

For some of the other clubs, where high-profile recruits are more difficult to come by, on-campus recruitment is crucial in their bids to return to top-10 finishes.

Duke’s club rowing competed in the Dad Vail Invitational agains the nation’s top club and several varsity programs on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia in April and in the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) Championship in May, making two grand finals. The Blue Devils finished sixth out of all the nation’s top clubs at the ACRA Championships in Gainesville, Ga.

“At Dad Vail we had never made it to grand finals before, so that was a big thing to get to that level where we were competing with the best programs,” club president Andrew Gauthier said. “And then ACRA we had never won a medal, and we didn’t win a medal there, but just coming that close showed that we were moving in the right direction.”

To find recruits, the squad finds sizable former endurance athletes from other sports.

“We use the activities fair, and just look for tall kids and tell them about the experiences we have had,” Gauthier said.

Dominic Labella, student director of club sports and club volleyball president, echoed Gauthier’s sentiment.

“Volleyball in high school is not highly advertised and popularized, so we don’t have access to information about whether Duke students played in high school,” he said. “The players have to come to us in order to become a member of the team, so usually the responsibility of recruitment lies on us to make flyers and members walk around campus looking for potential players.”

Labella’s squad also benefits from athletes new to the sport, featuring Georges Cuissart de Grelle—who at 6-foot-7 had never played volleyball before attending Duke but became an All-American last year at the Division 1AA level—and 6-foot-4 DeShane Hall, who played football and basketball in high school.

After winning the program’s first tournament in five years, the squad made a run at nationals, finishing third out of 48 teams in Reno, Nev.

To fund their trip to nationals, the team benefitted from member dues and up to $7,000 from the Gorter Fund, named in honor of Kevin Gorter, a Duke club sports member who died in a car crash in 1987. The initiative is funded by Kevin’s father, Jim, who has donated up to $4.2 million to the fund in the last 20 years.

Also falling in its semifinal match, Duke club women’s lacrosse finished fourth overall, playing its final tournament games the weekend of the university’s graduation ceremonies—and thus without all of its seniors. The finish marked a second-straight semifinals berth for the squad after a tumultuous 2012 campaign.

“That year... was a disaster,” club president Alexandra Stitt said. “[The team was] almost kicked out of the league. They kept forfeiting games that they were supposed to be playing.”

Thanks to the assistance of new coach Alexis Thieme—who won the club national championship as a student at North Carolina in 2012—the Blue Devil club has seen a resurgence, and now has two years of top-four finishes to build on for a championship run.

With the high caliber of skilled athletes and coaches coming into some of Duke club sports’ top programs, several clubs have the opportunity to bring more hardware back to Durham.