Friday Night Lights: a TV series, a high school football celebration and now a regular occurrence for Duke at season’s start.
The Blue Devils continued their dominant streak at the Elon Opener Friday night, with the men’s team recording seven top-10 finishes in its 6k race and the women’s team sweeping the top six spots in the 4k. Both teams confidently won the meet, with the men capturing their fifth Elon Opener title.
“The goal [for this meet] was to use it as a baseline test to see where we are,” said head coach Angela Reckart. “And you know, this early in the season, it’s nice to kind of … rip the band-aid off a little bit and to see where we are after we had a really good summer.”
In the men’s 6k, three Blue Devils came within 0.2 seconds of each other to finish in the top three - senior Austin Gabay, graduate student Rory Cavan and senior Jared Kreis, respectively, with times ranging from 17:38.5 to 17:38.7.
“The better you are, the better your team is, the better that’s going to make you,” Reckart said about the men’s trio. “The team does a really good job of working together … just day in and day out putting in solid work. I think that’s the key of cross country.”
In total, the men’s team had 16 runners compete at the Elon Opener. No freshman competed, but four graduate transfers - Zubeir Dagane, Owen Drometer, Michael Keehan and Jake Winslow - all made their Duke debut Friday night. Dagane, Keehan and Winslow all finished in the top eight of the 6K, and Drometer wasn’t too far behind them, coming in 13th place with a time of 17:58.4. Keehan finished a tenth of a second faster than junior Carter Dillon, who was competing in his first cross country meet since the 2018 season and who finished an 5th-place.
Just like the men’s team, the women’s team saw six runners sweep the top six spots in the 4K, with graduate student Emily Cole leading the pack with a 13:11.3 time. Senior Kelli Wilson and sophomore Anna Corcoran, who finished fourth and fifth, respectively, made major improvements on their times from the Elon Opener last season. Corcoran saw a 30-second improvement to her time, while Wilson improved by more than a minute. Both set personal-bests Friday night.
When asked about this strong jump, Reckart said that “another year in the same system” was critical to the improvement of Wilson and Corcoran. Reckart also credited favorable weather for the strong times, mentioning that the “nice, cool evening” contrasted well with the “heat and the humidity” of summer training.
The freshman duo of Ella Johns and Thais Rolly made their debut at Elon, and what a debut it was. Rolly finished in second place with a time of 13:16.9, while Johns finished sixth with a time of 13:31.9. Reckart expressed excitement at these times, as well as that of graduate transfer Julia Fenerty, who finished third-place; calling these debuts a “great early season indicator of where [the team is].”
With a successful season opener done, Reckart and Duke look toward the rest of the season. In two weeks, some of the Blue Devils will race at the Adidas XC Challenge at N.C. State’s campus Sept. 15. However, Reckart noted that the majority of the team would compete at the Virginia Invitational Sept. 23 in Charlottesville, Va.
“We’re in a really good place, a good starting point to continue to build, but [we’ll] just stay focused on putting in the work day in and day out … and I think things will continue to go really well,” Reckart said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.