The Blue Devils competed in the Panorama Farms Invitational Saturday, their final race before postseason competition. The race in Earlysville, Va., featured a few ACC cross country powerhouses in Wake Forest, Virginia and Virginia Tech, but Duke held its own and made sizable improvements. The men’s team finished at an impressive fifth place out of 18 teams and the women’s team placed eighth out of 14 teams.
“This is the most positive our team has been,” said head coach Kevin Jermyn after the race. “Teamwise, we are still building, and we aren’t where we hope to be by the end of the season, but we have made significant progress.” Though this race was only the second regular-season meet that the top group of Duke’s runners competed in, the team came together nicely just in time to head into the postseason.
On the women’s side, sophomore Hattie Reynolds and freshman Caroline Hood stole the show, finishing 15th and 20th, respectively, out of 134 total runners.
“This was the best cross country race that I’ve ever seen from Hattie and Caroline," Jermyn said. “Hattie has been steady and strong, and very consistent in her training. Caroline had a muscle strain that bothered her in Chicago, which limited her, but today was a reinforcement of the type of person we are seeing week in and week out. They are both running at a level that is going to make us competitive in both the ACC and nationally.”
Freshman Grace Geyer (67th), senior Abigail Paczewski (77th), and sophomore Lindsay Hausman (78th) rounded out the top-five for the women’s squad.
The men’s side showed promise as just 30 seconds separated the first from the fifth best runners for the Blue Devils. Senior Jack Stanley led the way, finishing 21st out of 197 runners. What’s most notable about Stanley’s performance was the way in which he moved up throughout the race. Stanley came through the 2K mark all the way back in 45th, but then jumped to 39th after the 4K and up to 27th after the 6K. He then overtook six more runners in the final two kilometers to finish 21st overall. Only 12 seconds behind him was senior Duncan Miller, who placed 31st. Freshman Luke Thompson (43rd), senior Beck Wittstadt (52nd), and freshman Alden Keller (54th), finished out a strong performance from the men’s squad.
Overall, Jermyn believes that this race has been a strong representation of the training the team has put in over the past several months. He also notes that with every race comes more experience, and the team is starting to put what they’ve learned to use.
“Having one race under our belt led to a lot of natural improvement. In every two-week cycle, the only time we go all-out is on race day. We use early season races as the most important workout in each two-week training cycle,” he said.
Having just completed their final race of the regular season, the Blue Devils turn their attention to the postseason. Their journey will begin at the ACC championships Nov. 1 at the WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary. The team is familiar with this course as they competed in the Adidas XC Challenge at the same location back in September. Jermyn made it clear that while the Blue Devils had a strong showing today, they can achieve much more.
“We want to place well at the ACC championships and the NCAA regionals,” Jermyn said. He described that the way to achieve these goals is by “making sure each runner has an idea of what helps them run their best race and making sure we are optimizing as many individual game plans as we can within a team setting.”
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