How would you describe Virginia's performance at last weekend's ACC outdoor championships in Chapel Hill -- a moral victory, a domination of the competition, a humbling middle-of-the-pack finish?
In the end, it proves to be a matter of perspective.
For Will Christian, McGavock Dunbar, Kellen Blassingame, David Sullivan and Inge Jorgensen, the weekend was an unquestioned success.
Christian finished first in the 5,000-meter run and second in the 10,000-meter, setting two personal records along the way. Dunbar ran "the perfect race" in the 800, only to lose at the wire by .05 seconds. Blassingame placed a strong third in the men's 400, and Sullivan cleared 17 feet in the poll vault to take second place in his event. Jorgensen had the most decisive win of any Virginia athlete. She won her third conference javelin title with a throw that was an astounding 26 feet farther than that of her nearest competitor.
In its review of the meet, virginiasports.com chose as its headline, "Cavaliers Dominate at ACC Track and Field Championships." And that's at least partially true. Those five Cavaliers -- Christian et al. -- did dominate, but the rest of the team hardly made a dent on the scoreboard.
As a team, the Cavaliers finished sixth in the men's competition and seventh in the women's. Hardly domination.
Instead it was Clemson's men and the women of host North Carolina that dominated the championships. Clemson outran Florida State 224-176 to take the men's title, and UNC beat second-place Georgia Tech by 40 points, 186.5-146, to win the women's title.
Virginia's men finished with 53 points. The women scored 51.5.
After struggling to find his rhythm for most of the season -- "I've been running terrible this year," he said -- Christian was the leading point scorer for the Cavaliers at the conference championships.
"I had a talk with him the day before [the race] and told him he needed to run with more confidence and poise," assistant coach Jason Dunn said of Christian. "And that's exactly what he did."
Friday night, Christian became only the fifth Cavalier ever to run 10,000 meters in sub-30 minutes when he finished at 29:55, placing second to FSU's Joep Tigchelaar. The next afternoon Christian bettered that performance with a 14:24 time to win the 5K by nine seconds over NC State's Andy Smith.
Dunbar, last season's conference 800-meter champion, missed out by the slimmest of margins in his quest to repeat. Leading nearly all of the second lap, Dunbar was clipped at the line by a surging Brendan Mahoney, losing the race 1:51.15 to 1:51.20.
"With 100 meters to go, no one was up on me yet, and I just tried to sprint," Dunbar said. "Fifteen meters to go, he came up on me and out-leaned me at the tape. I didn't even see him until the very end.
"It's unfortunate, but I was happy with how I ran," he said. "I don't think I could do much different."
It wasn't so much a question of would Jorgensen win the javelin throw, but by how much. In the end, Jorgensen, who had lost the previous two seasons to injury, cruised to her third conference title with a throw of 52.89 meters that was well beyond second place Amy Parulis's 45-meter toss.
Afterward, Jorgensen said she was less concerned with her place -- of which she was confident -- than with her performance.
"I know I have the ability to throw far, but the only way I'm going to throw far is by concentrating on what I have control of," she said. "What I have control of is on the runway, so my focus has been on what I'm doing and what I'm controlling within myself."
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