Duke track and field kicked back into action this past weekend in three different cities, smashing school records and furthering individual quests for NCAA championship bids. The Blue Devils competed against schools from all around the country, racing at sites hosted by Liberty, Clemson and Boston University.
Duke’s sprinters headed down to the Palmetto State for the Tiger Paw Invitational at Clemson, where they put on a masterful performance. Junior Lauren Tolbert was the star of the show for the Blue Devils, breaking the school record in the 800m for the fourth time this season. She finished her two laps around the track in a startling 2:02.75.
Also at Clemson was freshman Braelyn Baker, who posted a personal best with a second-place finish in the 200m sprint. She also finished fourth in the 400m dash, moving into fourth place in school history for the event.
“Lauren ran great in the 800, bringing herself in position to make the NCAA Indoors,” head coach Shawn Wilbourn said Sunday. “And then Braelyn Baker really showed that she’s going to be a superstar over the next four years. [I am] really excited for where she’s at and her ability to help as a team at the ACC Championship.”
The highlight of Duke’s showing in Clemson, however, was its performances in the 4x400m relays on both the men’s and women’s sides. More impressive was the amount of freshman talent that contributed to the races. Both teams posted school records, beating out standards that were four (men’s) and ten (women's) years old. Baker, Tolbert, graduate student Aliya Garozzo and senior Megan McGinnis finished the mile-long relay in 3:32.02. Freshmen Joseph Taylor and Andres Langston, junior Guinness Brown and senior Michael Bennett did it in just 3:10.28.
“Coach [Mark] Mueller is doing a heck of a job with the sprinters and we’re continuing to break records every year,” Wilbourn said.
The distance team traveled to Boston to run on an indoor track, a performance that left head coach Shawn Wilbourn pleased for the group as it readies for the indoor ACC Championship.
“The Boston track [is] designed for distance runners and that was the first meet indoors this year where we were able to get a lot of our top runners … so we were able to evaluate our ACC roster on the distance side,” Wilbourn said.
Headlining the Blue Devil roster in Boston was sophomore Iris Downes, who raced an impressive 2:45.39 in the 1000m, good for fourth place at the meet. The race was her personal best in college and also improved her position to No. 2 all-time on Duke’s leaderboard.
The jumps and hurdles squads traveled a short distance north to Lynchburg, Va., where Liberty hosted the Darius Dixon Memorial Invitational. There, the Blue Devils saw a dominant performance by graduate student Birgen Nelson, who took home gold in the 60m hurdles. Her finals time of 8.26 seconds was just 0.03 second shy of her personal best.
On the men’s side, sophomore Michael Scherk finished second in the 60m hurdles. His 7.97-second semifinals improved on his No. 2 all-time spot in the Duke record books.
“Our women's indoor hurdlers have always been extremely competitive, and it's great to see the men come on,” Wilbourn said. He has high hopes for both Nelson and Scherk at the ACC Championship in March.
Duke field athletes showed off at Liberty, too. They were headlined by graduate student Simen Guttormsen, who broke his own school record in the pole vault, setting the new one at 5.62 meters. Duke also had four other top three finishes, with sophomore Christian Toro in the men’s weight throw, graduate student Iyanna Lewis in the women’s weight throw, junior Gianna Locci in the long jump and graduate student Eric Bottern in the high jump.
To cap off the meet, this weekend’s women’s 4x400m squad — graduate student Kyla Krawczyk, freshman Emily Royce, freshman Amber Wimbish and senior Meredith Sims — raced to a first-place finish with a time of 3:44.17.
The team splits up again this weekend, heading back to Boston for the BU Terrier DMR Challenge and routing to Lynchburg, Va., for the Virginia Tech Challenge.
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Karen Xu is a Trinity senior and a photography editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.