Women’s 4x400m Dispatches ACC Record, Men’s 4xMile Shatters School Record

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – Duke capped an incredible outdoor regular season in historic fashion as a pair of record-breaking performances by the women’s 4x400m and men’s 4xMile relays headlined the final day of the 127th running of the Penn Relays at Franklin Field.
 
The Blue Devils also wrapped up competition at the Charlotte Invitational on Saturday, with the team turning in a strong day of performances featuring four event wins along with a top-five program mark.
 
 
PENN RELAYS

• Duke’s women’s 4x400m delivered the stoutest performance of the day en route to picking up a third-place finish amid a stacked event final field.
• After booking its spot in the final, following a preliminary round time of 3:39.74, Duke’s relay of freshmen Julia Jackson and Lauren Tolbert, graduate student Madison Mulder and sophomore Megan McGinnis raised the bar once again, turning in a historic performance.
• The Blue Devil quartet shaved 12 seconds off Friday’s preliminary time and turned in a blistering ACC and school-record time of 3:27.14 – currently No. 6 nationally, featuring individual splits of 53.07 (Jackson), 52.05 (Tolbert), 51.85 (Mulder) and 50.19 (McGinnis) seconds.
• Duke’s time upended the former 17-year-old conference record set by Miami (3:27.85) in 2006, while edging out the program’s previous fastest time of 3:28.27 that was registered at the 2021 NCAA Outdoor Championships.
• The men’s 4xMile relay joined in on the school record-breaking party with an incredible race of their own in the second track event of the afternoon.
• Behind the foursome of junior Austin Gabay, graduate student James Lee, sophomore Beck Wittstadt and graduate student Nick Dahl the Blue Devils clocked a blazing time of 16:14.67 – the ninth fastest in collegiate history – dismantling the previous 49-year old school record (1973) by eight seconds in the process.
• For the second time in as many days, the women’s 4x100m relay of graduate student Isabel Wakefield, senior Halle Bieber, Jackson and sophomore Abby Geiser revised the program record books.
• Advancing to Saturday’s final behind a time of 44.44 seconds in the Friday…