Two Iowa studs did both this year.
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Currently, Maatoug, Emily Cole, and a freshman recruit, Thais Rolly, are Duke's women's distance running. In ACC XC, Cole faded in the last km. for some reason. Rolly was a Virginia 6A champion and performed fairly well, but was beaten by strong freshman at other schools.In this video, she articulately explains why she chose Duke over Harvard.
My neighbor for the last several years was a California state champion and on junior national teams in cross and steeple. She chose Duke over Oregon because of academics, and then she chose academics over track and stayed another year to receive a Master's in management.
So, I think you are right about the balance between running and academics for both recruiting and development. It will be interesting to see how Rolly develops while at Duke.
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D3 stud Tyler Morris, who was one of Duke’s top grad recruits this year, had quite the underwhelming season. He was tough as nails so it’s hard to imagine how the program could have burned him out. His strava didn’t seem to show an injury or anything. It seems almost as if he’s focusing on track which is confusing for Morris. Anyone know what is up? Was looking forward to see him make the jump in D1.
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Sounds like the typical issue of a coach who doesn’t take feedback from their athletes and runs them into the ground. A quick look at some of the strata accounts show high MPW. I doubt Duke XC will have a break through until this Reckart person is replaced.
Also, didn’t see the men’s team at Nuttycombe, but their women’s team competed. Anyone know what happened there?
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On her own wrote:
VirginiaTrailer wrote:
Amina was recruited as an 800m runner according to the broadcast. I would say she is developing into one heck of a Distance runner. I imagine the Duke record books have been going through some changes recently.
Too bad she can't stand the coach and does her own thing. She's a super talent that will best much better after college. She's in it for the free Duke education. I can't blame her on that one.
Do you have evidence of this? I live in the area and "hate" Duke as I went to UNC... but the one time I was running at the Duke track this spring and saw her, it was running with the team prepping for outdoor NCAA regionals.
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mayesrandall wrote:
Currently, Maatoug, Emily Cole, and a freshman recruit, Thais Rolly, are Duke's women's distance running. In ACC XC, Cole faded in the last km. for some reason. Rolly was a Virginia 6A champion and performed fairly well, but was beaten by strong freshman at other schools.In this video, she articulately explains why she chose Duke over Harvard.My neighbor for the last several years was a California state champion and on junior national teams in cross and steeple. She chose Duke over Oregon because of academics, and then she chose academics over track and stayed another year to receive a Master's in management.
So, I think you are right about the balance between running and academics for both recruiting and development. It will be interesting to see how Rolly develops while at Duke.
Thais Rolly deserved to be mentioned. I viewed her as the replacement for Dalia Frias. But they really needed both of them. That's the weakness in the roster. Rolly had already committed before Frias bolted. Rolly is lightly raced and probably has more upside than she has shown so far. I expected her to establish as #2 behind Maatoug this fall but it didn't happen until the ACC meet. She fared only slightly worse at the ACC meet than Frias did as a freshman.
Duke apparently tried a more aggressive strategy in that ACC meet. Maatoug said in a post race interview that she heard her coaches yelling encouragement to her teammates throughout the race, so she knew they weren't that far behind. Maatoug said it encouraged her to grab every extra spot she could, just like they were.
However, the strategy backfired late. Emily Cole dropped 37 spots on the final split and another highly placed Duke runner also plummeted 37 spots. There was only one other runner in the field who faltered more than 20.
Maybe insiders will know differently but I haven't seen any indication that Maatoug is unhappy with Reckhart or the other coaches. She made positive remarks last year. Emily Cole seems very close to Reckhart, based on social media.
As someone else pointed out, Duke is focusing on track. The roster is loaded with 100-800 women who can score points at ACC level including relays. Maatoug puts them over the top at 1500/5000 and distance relay.
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Awsi Dooger wrote:
mayesrandall wrote:
Currently, Maatoug, Emily Cole, and a freshman recruit, Thais Rolly, are Duke's women's distance running. In ACC XC, Cole faded in the last km. for some reason. Rolly was a Virginia 6A champion and performed fairly well, but was beaten by strong freshman at other schools.In this video, she articulately explains why she chose Duke over Harvard.My neighbor for the last several years was a California state champion and on junior national teams in cross and steeple. She chose Duke over Oregon because of academics, and then she chose academics over track and stayed another year to receive a Master's in management.
So, I think you are right about the balance between running and academics for both recruiting and development. It will be interesting to see how Rolly develops while at Duke.
Thais Rolly deserved to be mentioned. I viewed her as the replacement for Dalia Frias. But they really needed both of them. That's the weakness in the roster. Rolly had already committed before Frias bolted. Rolly is lightly raced and probably has more upside than she has shown so far. I expected her to establish as #2 behind Maatoug this fall but it didn't happen until the ACC meet. She fared only slightly worse at the ACC meet than Frias did as a freshman.
Duke apparently tried a more aggressive strategy in that ACC meet. Maatoug said in a post race interview that she heard her coaches yelling encouragement to her teammates throughout the race, so she knew they weren't that far behind. Maatoug said it encouraged her to grab every extra spot she could, just like they were.
However, the strategy backfired late. Emily Cole dropped 37 spots on the final split and another highly placed Duke runner also plummeted 37 spots. There was only one other runner in the field who faltered more than 20.
Maybe insiders will know differently but I haven't seen any indication that Maatoug is unhappy with Reckhart or the other coaches. She made positive remarks last year. Emily Cole seems very close to Reckhart, based on social media.
As someone else pointed out, Duke is focusing on track. The roster is loaded with 100-800 women who can score points at ACC level including relays. Maatoug puts them over the top at 1500/5000 and distance relay.
Obviously they don’t care about distance if Duke hired Angela Reckart as their coach.
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Here's the deal: when Norm Ogilvie stepped down in 2020, Shawn Wilbourn (jumps coach) was named interim head coach and that position was made permanent the following year. At that point Rhonda Riley was coaching distance, but Wilbourn did not retain her, as he wanted to "go a different direction." Which is to say, kneecap the distance program and put all the resources into sprints/jumps/throws. Someone else wrote more about the situation here:
Make no mistake: this is willful incompetence. They are this bad by choice. Or rather, by Wilbourn's choice.
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Duke being a top academic school would be an athletic powerhouse in running if they get the right coach. The recruits coming in have good enough stats, but need some running guru to elevate them to the next level.
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If you look at his Colby TFRRS from last spring, he was dropping out of races and running mid-to-high 16s for the 5K. Whatever's going on with him, seems to have started during his track season at Colby.
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dirtdevil wrote:
Here's the deal: when Norm Ogilvie stepped down in 2020, Shawn Wilbourn (jumps coach) was named interim head coach and that position was made permanent the following year. At that point Rhonda Riley was coaching distance, but Wilbourn did not retain her, as he wanted to "go a different direction." Which is to say, kneecap the distance program and put all the resources into sprints/jumps/throws. Someone else wrote more about the situation here:Make no mistake: this is willful incompetence. They are this bad by choice. Or rather, by Wilbourn's choice.
This is the real answer. The new director, Wilbourne, has taken A SIGNIFICANT amount of scholarships and moved them to sprints, throws, and jumps.
Duke is clearly prioritizing track now. This is not a criticism of Wilbourne, as they just won ACC's outdoors by 60 points. It's just a fact that Reckhart has far less distance scholarships to work with than any Duke Distance coach since before the year 2000.
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Duke NEEDS HELP wrote:
Duke is terrible and no one gets developed there. What gives!?!?
When was Duke any good ever? Your post should read "Duke is really bad, same as it has always been for decades"
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Duke flat out crushed everyone at the ACC Outdoor TF Championships this past spring. Will most likely do it again. The coaches are obviously very good and they are obviously making the right decisions with their scholarships. At least on womens side.
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Duke has been below average in distance for a long time. Their current coach is completely clueless too. She was hired and anyone knows by going to Duke it’s a 100% academic choice. No one that cares about running fast would actually want to run for that women
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Tyler Morris will win the ACC 10k and the haters will go home devastated! IT'S T-TIME
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Duke beat NC State*
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Couldn't agree more - Duke's been a bum a** distance school for years, why is this now coming up? I thought it was an unspoken fact that duke is a school where kids go to get jobs and put their running careers at risk... I've been watching Duke, UNC, State, and Wake for years now and after watching those teams compete, it looks like Duke is playing a different sport year in and year out. One of duke's years of success came in a flukey COVID year and we all know that team wouldn't have made nationals without that. Doesn't seem to matter who's coaching, Duke clearly is a Track first school with the most mediocre distance program given the high status of the school. With that said Reckart seems to be average, she seems to be heavily relying on transfers and internationals for success but hey that's what a lot of schools do nowadays so can't blame her.
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If he is bright enough to be accepted at Duke, then maybe he could run for one of the Ivies. Certainly, the running would be good at Harvard, Princeton, UPenn for someone like him (he's a bit too good a runner for the others). Possible issue is that they give out no athletic scholarships - only need-based financial aid. There are many other excellent academic running schools: Stanford (obviously), UVA, Georgetown, UMichigan, Notre Dame, Wake Forest, etc... Shame he chose a place without a proven, excellent distance coach
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