Play under review: The Chronicle’s 2024-25 season recaps and sports highlights

Before the academic calendar flips once and for all, The Chronicle takes a comprehensive look back at the 2024-25 season. Check out some of this year’s most interesting storylines or scroll further down for a complete recap of each team’s campaign:

This past season of Duke athletics featured a cast of stars from all over the school, from freshman basketball phenoms that instantly became some of the ACC’s finest hoopers to Dutch transfers that shut down opposing offenses all fall. The Chronicle’s Sports Columns Editor, Myles Powicki, broke down the top flight of Blue Devils in a series of articles naming a Blue Devil of the Year and All-Duke First and Second Teams. 

One thing that the freshmen phenoms, Dutch newcomers and many more Blue Devils had in common? Duke programs fielded excellent defenses across all sports and season. Powicki painted the picture of a convergence of defensive talent this year.

The Chronicle also went in-depth for a melange of other interesting stories around Duke. There was big-time coverage of big-time coaches in the fall, from women’s soccer’s coach Robbie Church’s final season and his team’s historic run to Manny Diaz’s ascendance through the college football coaching ranks. Readers got to know the charity work behind Duke athletics this season, with the humanitarian work of Sion James taking the spotlight and stories of student athletes helping communities across the globe. 

The Chronicle learned about the fans at Duke events, from the loyal tailgaters of Wallace Wade to college basketball’s most famous fans. Attendees of Duke events weren’t the only Blue Devils to have their story told this season: from bars to barbershops, the Duke faithful found community all over Durham.

For some Blue Devil student-athletes, their community was family, as the Krug siblings dominated the tennis courts together and women’s basketball teammates became close in all but blood. Writers sat down for a Q&A with the women’s golf team, dove into the injury-recovery process for Duke’s top performers, and profiled rising stars Ruben Mesalles and Shelby Bumgarner.

On and off the court, these stories offered a new lens through which to view Duke athletics during the 2024-25 season. They offer just a small glimpse of the coverage on our sports features and sports columns pages.

Men’s soccer: All things considered, the Blue Devils played as well as those versed in the system expected, performing marginally better than they did the last two years without flying high in tournament play. The Chronicle’s season preview predicted Duke’s run quite well, correctly tabbing Luckhurst, Speel, Acito and Bjornsson as those to keep eyes on. Our beats also called the Tobacco Road rivalry game for the season’s most anticipated, and it certainly turned out the most dramatic. There was a point in early November, right as the regular season ended, when the Blue Devil faithful might have hoped for a deep national run — peaking at No. 2 in the country, Duke looked nothing like the team that tied Coastal Carolina in its exhibition opener. There was growth for this soccer team, to be sure. The Blue Devils just couldn’t crack the NCAA Tournament. 

Women’s soccer: Duke had an incredibly successful 2024 season, playing some of the best soccer seen in program history and setting a new standard for dominance. The Blue Devils, under the guidance of veteran head coach Robbie Church in his 24th and final season, won the ACC regular-season championship with an undefeated 9-0-1 conference record, finishing the year at 18-3-1 overall. For the first time in 32 years, they were ranked No. 1 entering the NCAA Championship. Duke’s rise to the top was driven by a powerhouse offense that scored 68 goals during the season, an average of 3.09 per game. But the Blue Devils’ remarkable season came to a heartbreaking close in the College Cup, at the hands of the Tar Heels. After narrowly beating North Carolina twice in the regular season, Duke fell to its Tobacco Road rivals in championship play. 

Field hockey: Head coach Pam Bustin’s squad reassured the field hockey world that its performance last season was no fluke. Duke (13-7, 6-2 in the ACC) collected five ranked wins during the regular season, including victories against then-No. 4 Maryland and then-No. 9 Boston College. Overall, the Blue Devils played with a similar consistency to their 2023 season, posting impressive wins against strong opponents and finding offensive success from players like McVeigh and van Oirschot. A semifinal loss in the ACC Tournament and an NCAA Tournament exit against its biggest rival provides much energy for Duke looking forward to the 2025 season.

Volleyball: In head coach Jolene Nagel’s 26th year, talent was anything but rare. Defensive stars Mailinh Godschall, Nikki Underwood and Grace Penn, and offensive stars Kerry Keefe, Rachel Richardson, Rylie Kadel, Ngozi Iloh, Breonna Goss and Taylor Williams dazzled on the court throughout the season. Still, despite optimism, the Blue Devils soon learned what it means to swim in the ACC. The challenging schedule was reflected in Duke’s 4-7 nonconference record to open the season. The trials only continued, with the Blue Devils defeating their first two ACC opponents before eventually winding up with a 6-14 conference record to close the season with a 13th-place finish in the ACC — a fall from their sixth-place rank last season.

Cross country: The 2024 Duke cross country campaign showed mixed results, but a promising future, in the first year of new head coach Kevin Jermyn’s time in Durham. In a relatively short season, the Blue Devils raced just six times, including the ACC Championships and the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships. While both sides were definitely upset with their performances at ACCs, the bounceback on the men’s side left the team with optimism going into the indoor track season. The women’s team definitely had more belief coming into the season, so a last place finish at the ACCs alongside a NTS (no team score) was disheartening — but for a first year head coach with a team consisting primarily of juniors and younger, a high finish in the ACC was relatively unlikely. 

Winter

Men’s basketball: The 2024-25 Blue Devils were a special group. Their road to the Final Four did not start with the Elite Eight or even the Round of 64. It started by almost doubling Lincoln’s score in the preseason. It started with beating Maine. Then, losses to Kentucky and Kansas followed by a 16-game win streak. A nail-biting heartbreaker against Clemson was the lone conference blemish. It featured the Cameron Crazies, the NBA Global Academy, student managers, Sion James’ leadership, Caleb Foster’s reinvention and Scheyer recruiting a teenage Cooper Flagg. The Blue Devils fell in heartbreaking fashion to Houston in San Antonio, but this was already a historic season for Scheyer’s bunch. The highs and lows didn’t fit into a single season review, so check out the linked landing page of all our best coverage instead.

Women’s basketball: Coming into Duke women’s basketball’s 2024-25 regular season, some things were more certain than others. The Blue Devils clearly had a more experienced roster, but uncertainty came in September when it was revealed that Arianna Roberson, who would likely have seen significant minutes down low, would miss the entire season with a knee injury. Duke dropped a contest against Maryland on the road, but got back on track with some easy nonconference wins. A grueling ACC schedule put Kara Lawson’s team to the test, but characteristically strong defense began to shine through. The Blue Devils won the conference tournament for the first time since 2013 and advanced all the way to the Elite Eight in March before falling to No. 1-seed South Carolina.

Fencing: While the team’s postseason wasn’t quite what it would have hoped, Duke had an impressive regular season. The Blue Devils maintained winning records since the start of the new year, even upsetting then-No. 1 Harvard on both the men’s and women’s side in February. The women’s team, in particular, went undefeated against a total of 10 schools across the back-to-back Eric Sollee Invitational and Beguinet Classic tournaments. With this season being only the second under head coach Omar Elgeziry’s leadership, there is a lot to be proud of but still room for improvement. It may take a few more years, but this Duke program is undoubtedly starting to take form. 

Wrestling: Duke had a tough year on the mats, going 4-14 overall and winless in the conference. Redshirt sophomore Connor Barket and redshirt freshman Aidan Wallace were two bright spots for the struggling team. Barket put up a career-high 24 victories across the season, including several ranked wins, to slot himself fifth in his weight class at Duke all-time. He also qualified for the NCAA Championship despite his team’s last-place finish at the ACC Championships. Wallace showed promise with 22 victories and an ACC Wrestler of the Week recognition Jan. 28.

Swim and dive: The Blue Devils faced tough competition in the 2024-25 season — perhaps tougher than ever before. The addition of Cal, SMU and Stanford to the ACC upped the conference stakes, while dozens of NCAA swimmers rode their training for the 2024 Olympics into blistering-fast collegiate seasons. Duke stepped up to both challenges as best it could in its second year under head coach Brian Barnes. While Duke did not place as high in postseason competition as it did in previous years, the Blue Devil women found immense success within the context of the program. They broke 10 school and 10 pool records across the season in nine different events, while the men put together a solid rebuilding year.

Spring

Softball: Following last season’s immense success, orchestrating a record-breaking encore was always going to be a tall task. The Blue Devils finished the season 41-18, with 16 conference wins on the year. The squad was unable to make significant waves in the postseason, despite securing the last first-round bye in the ACC Tournament and hosting its own regional in the NCAA Tournament. It was a heartbreaking way to finish the year, with no postseason hardware to commemorate what was largely a solid showing from a talented squad. Though it may be of little consolation, the team did log 41 wins and extended its 40-win-season streak to five years, a marker of continued regular-season success for the young program.

Baseball: The Blue Devils‘ 2025 campaign was nothing short of a roller coaster. Head coach Chris Pollard’s squad — reloaded following a 2024 ACC Championship title — entered the season with a top-16 expectation and a chance to finally claim a spot in Omaha, Neb. The team stumbled, however, dropping its opening series against Cincinnati and getting swept at Stanford in its second ACC series. Just when it looked like Duke would drown within a highly talented conference, timely shake-ups in the rotation paired with the resurgence of AJ Gracia and standout offense from Ben Miller powered a stretch of key series wins. It seemed as though the team would continue to ride that momentum. A strong outing from Owen Proksch helped put it within one game of its first trip to the College World Series since 1961. That dream would not be realized as the tournament’s biggest Cinderella in Murray State reclaimed the momentum in Game 2 and never looked back. This defeat was followed by an extra sting as Pollard subsequently announced his decision to fill the head coach vacancy at Virginia.

Track and field: With a men’s ACC team win, an individual national championship and a record 16 athletes sent to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, 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. But by the ACC Outdoor Championships, they had put the pieces together for a complete team performance. 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. 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

Men’s lacrosse: If 2023 was heartbreaking and 2024 underwhelming, 2025 was just confusing. Unlike last season’s star-studded, attack-first, Brennan-O’Neill-led Blue Devils, this year’s Duke team was an at-times-unstoppable and at-times-unthreatening group that eventually found its way to the mean. The Blue Devils hung around the top 10 all season but wobbled most of the way. Non-conference wins against Jacksonville, Penn and Richmond showed promising signs. Non-conference defeats to Princeton and Denver showed worrying ones. When ACC play rolled around, Duke was blitzed by Notre Dame, fell just short against North Carolina, torched Syracuse and escaped Virginia, leaving it squarely on the postseason bubble. An ACC Tournament semifinal rout of the Tar Heels gave the Blue Devils a chance at the championship before a title-game defeat to the Orange re-exposed their offensive deficiencies ahead of a first-round NCAA Tournament exit at home to Georgetown. 

Women’s lacrosse: Coming into 2025, Duke was expected to finish eighth in the ACC. Fast forward to May, and the Blue Devils were ranked No. 9 in the national end-of-season poll. Finishing 14-6 overall and 6-3 in its conference, Duke finally found success after several years of struggling to find its team identity. The season was largely characterized by nail-biting wins and losses. Though the team ultimately earned a No. 4 seed in the ACC Tournament, it was trounced by Clemson in the quarterfinals 15-7. The Blue Devils then defeated James Madison 17-10 and upset fifth-seed Virginia in the NCAA Tournament before finally meeting their match against fourth-seed Florida. 

Men’s tennis: On paper, Duke was as good as any group in the country. But it was a season defined by inconsistency; the team could not quite string together quality performances despite flashes of brilliance. The strength of the Blue Devils was their depth with 13 players, but that created some challenges with forming lineups and continuity. The Blue Devils barely missed the top-16 qualification for hosting an NCAA Regional and lost in Knoxville, Tenn. It’s worth nothing that they were a phenomenal doubles group all year, winning 16 of 18 doubles points after ACC play began. 

Women’s tennis: Duke women’s tennis bounced back from last year to finish the season with a 24-4 record, 12 conference wins and a trip to the NCAA Quarterfinals for the first time since 2022. Notably, those 12 conference wins were enough to claim an undefeated season and Duke’s first ACC regular-season title since 2018. A season full of milestones and ranked-opponent conquests resulted in a top-five finish nationally, but at the expense of a ACC Semifinals loss to Virginia and NCAA Quarterfinals loss to top-ranked Georgia — the eventual national champion.

Rowing: Duke’s 2024-25 season was defined by growth and development in head coach Adrian Spracklen’s first year with the Blue Devils. In the face of a competitive spring schedule, the Blue Devil squad learned to perform under pressure, a skill that contributed to a slew of second place finishes at the Big 10 Invitational — a regatta that featured 13 of the top 25 teams in the country. At the end of the season, however, the Blue Devils fell short of their NCAA dreams. In a competitive ACC conference, Duke struggled to reach the podium. 

Men’s golf: The evening hours in Carlsbad, Calif., saw sophomore Bryan Kim sign the final Blue Devil scorecard for the 2024-2025 season. His individual appearance at the NCAA Championship marked the end of a golf campaign that showed much promise, with one team victory and three other top-five finishes in the fall. A more turbulent spring slate showed just how brutal the game of golf can be. Many experienced players seemed to lose their shot, coming up short in the ACC and NCAA Tournaments. It seemed as though it was a repeat year for Duke — although the program now sits at a crossroads following the departure of head coach Jamie Green.

Women’s golf: Duke did have several highlights from its spring campaign, but the team’s shining moments from the fall demonstrated potential that the Blue Devils did not fully realize. To open the spring, Duke placed second at the PDI Intercollegiate; three tournaments later, freshman Anna Cañado Espinal claimed a career-first individual win at the Chattanooga Classic. By comparison, the Blue Devils recorded a pair of top-two finishes, including both one team and one individual first-place result, in the fall. Duke placed in the top five at three of its four tournaments in the fall; the team added only two more top-five finishes over the five stroke play competitions it saw in the spring.