Overview

With a men’s ACC team win, an individual national championship and a record 16 athletes sent to the NCAA Outdoor Championship, the 2025 outdoor season was one of Duke’s most successful campaigns to date. 

It didn’t appear that way earlier during the indoor season. Early in March, the Blue Devils capped a smattering of standout individual performances at minor meets with a disappointing team showing at ACCs, where the men finished seventh and the women finished 10th. While Simen Guttormsen took the NCAA pole vault crown and fellow graduate Christian Johnson nabbed second-team All-America honors a couple weeks later, they were the sole Blue Devils present at the indoor championships. And though junior mid-distance star Lauren Tolbert broke her own 800-meter school record an astonishing four times throughout the winter season, the Blue Devils were missing something — team track and field. 

As the outdoor season kicked off, the pieces began to fall into place. Head coach Shawn Wilbourn predicted it after the NCAA Indoor Championship. He told the Chronicle, “We’re more of an outdoor team,” and his athletes soon began to prove it. 

At local meets like Raleigh Relays and the program’s own Duke Invitational, the Blue Devils hammered in event wins and program all-time marks in events ranging from the hammer throw to the short hurdles. 

On the track, themes began to emerge in certain events like the women’s 4×400-meter relay. Building on its ACC Indoor Championship gold medal, the relay squad opened the season with a No. 2 NCAA time of 3:31.31 to win Raleigh Relays. From there, it brought home a coveted Penn Relays wheel after a decisive victory in 3:27.77— the second-fastest time in program history. At the ACC Outdoor Championship, the relay defended its title on the back of a blistering 50.17-second anchor leg by Tolbert. The Duke quartet rounded off its illustrious outdoor campaign with a fifth-place finish and ACC No. 2 all-time mark of 3:27.40 in the final of the NCAA Outdoor Championship.

For the Blue Devils as a whole, the undoubted highlight of the outdoor season was the ACC Outdoor Championship. Although the women fell short of a three-peat team win, it was a sort of homecoming for the Duke men, who won their first-ever ACC team title. Pure dominance on the field made it happen for the men: a pair of gold medals from Guttormsen in the pole vault and sophomore Christian Toro in the hammer throw, along with a 2-3-4 finish in the javelin, to name a few. 

After that historic ACC victory, the Blue Devils kept the match lit at the NCAA East Regional meet as they qualified a record 16 athletes — nine women and seven men — to the outdoor national championships in Eugene, Ore. And on the biggest stage, the Blue Devils delivered. After battling through four days of intense competition, they brought home 17 All-America honors, highlighted by fifth-place finishes across the board in the men’s 400-meter dash and pole vault, as well as the women’s 800-meter and 4×400-meter relay.

The men’s close victory was the highlight of the season, with the team pulling through in relays against archrival North Carolina. The Tar Heels led the Blue Devils 82-80 going into the final event — the 4×400-meter relay. California, meanwhile, was nipping at both heels — almost literally — with 79.83 points on the board.

For a team which had struggled early on in relays, the men pulled through thanks to stamina and a deep roster that kept Duke competitive from the first day. A commanding early performance proved crucial to the win, with the Blue Devils racking up 30 points by the first day’s end. Duke’s lead-clinching events before the nail-biter relay went beyond gold medals, with the 2-3-4 finish in javelin throw — courtesy of graduate students Scott Campbell, Matthew Prebola and Joe DiDiario — and Max Forte’s bronze medal in long jump adding much-needed points. 

As Duke led in the 5,000-meter, coaches were faced with an unenviable choice: who should run the 4×400-meter relay after three punishing days of competition. With the first win for the men’s team in sight, they selected two freshmen and two graduate students, hoping their much-tested legs would push through one final, grueling, potentially career-defining race. The four runners — freshmen Taylor and Andres Langston and graduate students Callum Robinson and TJ Clayton — set a program record of 3:04.49. 

While the women missed out on a hoped-for three-peat, falling behind on the tournament’s last day, the team still notched several top-three finishes, finishing fifth overall. The Blue Devils ultimately defended their 4×400-meter relay title by a razor-thin 0.09 seconds. Individual performances kept the team going strong, particularly on the track, with Baker and graduate students Birgen Nelson and Aliya Garozzo earning a third-place finish each. -Samanyu Gangappa

MVPs: Lauren Tolbert and Joseph Taylor

Duke track and field’s 2024-2025 season represented arguably its most successful in program history, and it took a group effort to build the historic results. The 17 USTFCCCA All-America honors that the Blue Devils pulled in meant a full cast of athletes across the board played their roles in the team’s success this season.

A high point this season on the men’s side was the ACC Outdoor Championship, where the men’s team narrowly overtook North Carolina to secure its first conference championship in program history. In the field, a pair of conference golds from Guttormsen and Toro helped give the Blue Devils an edge. But it was freshman phenom Joseph Taylor who delivered all across the board in the competition. Medals in the 200-meter run, 400-meter run and 4×400-meter relay — with a school record to accompany each piece of hardware — stands as Taylor’s contribution to the historic victory. The Toledo, Ohio, native picked up a fourth school record as a part of the 4×100-meter relay, and it was Taylor and the 4×400-meter quartet’s performance which clinched the men’s ACC title.

The freshman went on to earn a fifth-place finish in the NCAA Outdoor Championship and earned a 13th-overall placement with his 4×400-meter relay to leave Eugene, Ore., with multiple USTFCCCA All-America honors.

On the women’s side, nine athletes qualifying for the outdoor championships signaled plenty of firepower from that half of Wilbourn’s squad. But when all was said and done, it was junior Lauren Tolbert whose performance stood above the rest on the biggest stage. 

In the 800m prelims, Tolbert — a familiar face on Duke’s catalog of program records — marked her personal best and a new school record with a coveted sub-two-minute finish. “That’s rare air elite territory,” Wilbourn said of her record. In the finals, the Belmont, N.C., native clocked out at fifth overall, improving on her eighth-overall finish at the same meet one season prior. A mere hour later, Tolbert took part in the historic 4×400-meter relay finish to take home her second USTFCCCA All-America first-team honor during her time in Eugene. -Colton Schwabe

Accolades

The men’s team’s first conference title in program history remains the story of the teams’ ACC Championship for the outdoor season. In that competition, the women’s dominant 4×400-meter relay — then composed of Garozzo, Julia Jackson, Megan McGinnis and Tolbert — took home the conference gold for a repeat of its indoor conference title. 

Toro and Guttormsen took home golds from their respective field events as Guttormsen’s victory represented a conference sweep for the indoor and outdoor championships to complement the Norwegian’s NCAA Indoor Championship first-place finish.

The Blue Devils left their conference championships having earned 48 All-ACC honors through the indoor and outdoor meets. In the ACC Outdoor Championship alone, Duke picked up a trio of golds, a trio of silvers and 10 bronze medals. Seventeen national All-America honors and four top-five placements were the fruits of the successful outdoor championship, and as a fitting conclusion to the Blue Devils’ celebrated season, Wilbourn earned recognition as USTFCCCA Southeast Region Coach of the Year. -Schwabe

Key departures

A successful season can be hard to repeat — especially when a team says goodbye to some of its most consistent members.

Seniors Abby Geiser and McGinnis proved critical to Duke’s outdoor dominance at the business end of the season. Geiser led the women’s team to an All-America honor in the 4×100-meter relay during the NCAA Outdoor Championship. In the 4×400-meter relay, she was part of the team that finished fifth overall and became No. 2 in ACC history. For both, the tournament marked the end to notable careers as Blue Devils. McGinnis earned gold medals in both the indoor and outdoor ACC Championships during her first two years at Duke, followed by another gold in the outdoor championship as a junior. 

On the men’s side, an ACC Championship title is a hard act to follow. Clayton — a Blue Devil fixture since transferring from Rhodes — and Forte are among the departures following this season. Both advanced to the NCAA Outdoor Championship, and Forte’s dominance in long jump and decathlon will be missed. Graduate Beau Allen was ranked 22nd nationally at the end of last year’s regular season, depriving the jumpers of a key talent. Fellow graduate Guttormsen, who also qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Championship and earned a bronze medal at the tournament in pole vault last year, departs after winning a gold medal at both conference championships. Despite the talent among undergraduates who still have at least one year left, Duke will have to figure out how to repair the holes left behind by team members it previously relied on. -Gangappa