Duke’s cross country teams head into Friday morning with some real traction behind them, and both squads will try to turn that momentum into NCAA Championship qualification at the 2026 NCAA Southeast Regional Championships.
The meet takes place at the Roger Milliken Center on the campus of University of South Carolina Upstate. The women’s 6k starts at 10 a.m., followed by the men’s 10k at 11 a.m.
Progress and times will be available through Flash Results. Duke arrives after a strong showing at the ACC Championships, where the women finished fifth and the men placed sixth.
On the women’s side, Duke comes in ranked sixth in the Southeast Region and 19th nationally. Sophomore Victoria Garces has been the headliner, and she’s coming off a third-place finish at the conference meet with a personal-best 19:01.
Freshmen Cassidy Armstrong and Sundara Weber have filled the No. 2 and No. 3 spots for Duke all season, while junior Anna Callahan is coming off a career performance two weeks ago. The group also leans on the experience of seniors Hattie Reynolds and Thais Rolly, along with graduate student Nimrit Ahuja.
The men are riding a different kind of surge, one built on their ACC performance two weeks ago. Duke’s sixth-place finish there marked its best result in a complete year of racing since 2013, and graduate student Finlay Ross-Davie has been at the center of it. The Glasgow, Scotland native finished 15th overall at the conference meet and has lowered his time in every race this season.
Alden Keller has held the No. 2 spot in the last two meets, while Will Purnell, Aden Bandukwala and Rendon Kuykendall are all competing for Duke’s three-through-five positions. All three turned in strong runs at the ACC Championship as they found their rhythm late in the season. Zachary Parker and Arthur Graham round out the lineup after finishing as Duke’s fifth and sixth runners at the conference meet.
The path to the NCAA Championships is straightforward, but unforgiving. In each of the nine regionals, the top two teams earn automatic bids, accounting for 18 spots in the 32-team field. The NCAA DI Cross Country Subcommittee then adds 14 at-large teams based first on regional performance, then on regular-season and conference results.
Individual qualification works a little differently. The first four finishers who are not on an automatic qualifier or at-large team advance, as long as they place in the top 25 in their region.
That creates 36 automatic individual qualifiers, with two more selected at-large for a total of 38. Those two at-large spots go to the highest-placing individuals at a regional who were not already automatic qualifiers.
The NCAA Championships are scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 21 in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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