After finishing second in the 5,000-meters with a personal best of 14:17.89, Duquette tried his hand at the mile run. Duquette sat back early on while a rabbit led the pack through the first half under four-minute pace and then began to move up. He closed on runner-up Alex Tatu of Virginia in the final 200-meters to take the win at the line 4:09.51 to 4:09.87.
Chepsiror used similar tactics in the 1,000-meters putting over three seconds on runner-up Chris Catton of Wake Forest on the last lap to win in a national qualifying time of 2:25.60. Chepsiror also anchored VIC's 4 x 800-meter relay, including Pat Marion, David Cheromei and Jason Lewis, to a runner-up finish behind Virginia Tech with an NAIA leading time of 7:39.56.
Other national qualifiers for the Cobras included David Cheromei who finished third in the 5k at 14:21.03; Ray Williams who qualified in both the 200 and 400-meters with times of 22.22 and 48.73 and the 3,000-meter threesome of Ondrej Puskar (8:34.78), Russell Neff (8:37.68) and Jesus Chavez (8:45.41). Renata Volf notched her second national qualifying mark for the Lady Cobras with her 12th-place 3,000m time of 10:16.71.
Earning national provisional marks for VIC were Nick Glimsdahl with a 15:23.33 5,000-meters and Jason Lewis and Pat Marion who posted 1,000-meter times of 2:34.33 and 2:35.79.
VIC will co-host a last chance qualifier with King College on February 19th before competing in the NAIA National Championships in Johnson City, TN March 3-5th.