Duke cross country, track and field athletes describe neglect and discomfort under former head coach Angela Reckart (2024)

Content warning: The following report includes references to depression and suicidal thoughts.

Editor’s note: The Chronicle elected to grant anonymity to select runners due to the emotional intensity of their experience and fear of retaliation. All facts in the article have been confirmed by multiple sources throughout The Chronicle's investigation.

On March 18, during the team’s Monday practice, Shawn Wilbourn, director of track and field and cross country, announced to the distance team that the head coach of cross country and distance track, Angela Reckart, would not be returning after the conclusion of the spring track season.

Reckart’s departure from the program comes at the end of a three-year tenure with the Blue Devils. She leaves in the wake of a school year characterized by an overwhelming sense of discontentment from athletes, the result of a coaching style rooted in inconsistency and neglect, according to several members of her team.

“Reckart [was] not good at helping her athletes navigate through failure,” said Ben Armentrout, a former member of the cross country and track programs. “As vulnerable young people in stressful environments, we needed more support to get through failure than we got.”

Armentrout and several of his former teammates spoke to The Chronicle about their negative experiences running for Reckart. Athletes described how their coach refused to pay them necessary attention, didn’t accept illness as a reason for missing practice and failed to offer individual support. Reckart also revoked fifth-year offers from two senior runners for “attitude” problems that their teammates insisted were not an issue.

Towards the end of the fall 2023 semester, 37 members of the cross country team signed a memo with a list of grievances directed towards the coaching staff, with a special emphasis on Reckart. The team sent the memo to Deputy Athletic Director Troy Austin, who oversees the cross country and track and field programs for Duke Athletics.

Art Chase, senior associate director of athletics and external affairs at Duke Athletics, denied The Chronicle’s request to obtain the document.

When he was promoted, Wilbourn fired a number of coaches, replacing them with his own hires. Reckart took over for Rhonda Riley, who had steered the distance program ship for five years. Riley was popular with the track team and recruited athletes for the Classes of 2024 and 2025 — they had committed to run with her, not with Reckart.

“I think not a single person would agree with the decision [to fire Riley],” said Jared Kreis, a Class of 2024 graduate.

Armentrout said he ran well and had a “pretty good experience” under Riley during his first year. But he left the track team in the fall of 2021 — his sophom*ore year — because of the neglect he experienced running for Reckart.

By his sophom*ore year, Armentrout felt that being on the track and cross country teams was limiting his Duke experience, especially academically. Athletic academic advisors discouraged him from taking difficult physics courses, saying they might interfere with practice. When he got sick with bronchitis in fall 2021, he couldn’t work out with the team, and his mental health spiraled.

“I was really depressed,” he said. “I was really in a funk. I sort of felt like all these things that used to keep me going, like all these projects and clubs and even studying physics, had sort of fallen by the wayside. It was only running, which wasn’t that fulfilling. And [then] even running goes away.”

Armentrout described how he turned to alcohol to cope with his depression. When he slept through a weekend practice in late October 2021, Reckart summoned him to the track later that day. She made him run laps for about half an hour before she realized he was still intoxicated and allowed him to stop, Armentrout explained. The following Monday, he told Reckart and assistant coach Adam Cooke that he had spent the last several weeks feeling suicidal and was unsure of what to do.

“She asked me if I had faith and then suggested, ‘maybe that’s something you should try,’” Armentrout said, noting that he is not a religious person and that he felt dismissed by Reckart. “When I was at the single lowest point in my life, she tried to change my religion.”

Reckart and Cooke then suggested that Armentrout take some time away from the team.

“It’s not like there’s the benefit of the doubt to say, ‘usually she's a pretty supportive coach,’” Armentrout said. “She never was a good mentor of young people … if you were struggling as a 19-year-old who was going through a crisis … there was such deep distrust, I knew they weren’t going to be supportive.”

Since that meeting, he said that he has not spoken to Reckart or Cooke. Reckart did not reply to multiple requests for comment on Armentrout’s story.

Armentrout is not the only former runner who cites neglect as a reason for unhappiness on the team. A former runner, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Chronicle how Reckart’s disregard during continued illnesses and injuries led them to a deep depression.

The athlete also explained how Reckart would take little notice of runners when they were ill, neglecting to check in on them or speak to them at practice. These observations came after multiple seasons of running for Reckart before the athlete left the team.

“All of our self-worth was tied to our performance. There was no human aspect to our relationship with her," the athlete said. Reckart made members of the team feel “useless” unless they could score points for the team.

Kreis had a similar impression of Reckart’s response to athletes who were sick.

“It was kind of hard to say you were missing practice,” he said. “There were definitely days where I was sick, but it’s like, you kind of gotta run through it, just to make sure you make a good impression.”

He said that missing practice on account of being sick would often mean missing the next meet, even if a runner had not actually missed much training.

“It always seemed like, if there was a chance for someone not to race, they would always try to take that, for some reason,” Kreis said. “So if something was small … I think most guys would try to cover it up or run through it.”

While athletes are speaking out about their experience with Reckart now, they were quiet until fall 2023 — when tensions between Reckart and her athletes escalated.

On Sept. 23, following the Virginia Invitational cross country meet, six senior members of the track and cross country teams hosted a party for the program at their off-campus house.

On Sept. 25, Reckart and Cooke learned about the party. They notified Rory Cavan and Austin Gabay, then-captains of the men’s cross country team, that they would receive a punishment for hosting the party at their house. On Sept. 29, the coaches informed Cavan, Gabay and Kreis that they would not be competing at the Nuttycombe Invitational, one of the biggest meets of the season and the best chance for them to qualify for the NCAA Championships. The other three people living in the house were not part of the top seven on the men’s cross country roster, meaning they could not be suspended from Nuttycombe. They received no punishment from the program.

Kreis, Gabay and Cavan watched their seasons end Nov. 10, at the NCAA Southeast Regionals. Without Nuttycombe, nobody on the men’s team qualified for nationals.

Three days later, Reckart, Cooke and Wilbourn summoned Kreis and Gabay into separate meetings, where the coaches informed their runners that there would no longer be a spot for them on the 2024-25 roster, citing “attitude” concerns.

As members of the Class of 2024, Gabay and Kreis each maintain an extra year of college eligibility due to COVID-19. Reckart and Wilbourn promised both of them a fifth year to compete with the Blue Devils, according to Gabay and Kreis.

Although Reckart and Wilbourn could not legally revoke the athletic scholarships that both runners had already been promised, the coaches threatened to bar Gabay and Kreis from running for the program.

When Gabay and Kreis informed the other members of the distance squad what had happened, underclassmen spoke with Reckart and Wilbourn, insisting that the seniors’ attitudes had not been an issue with the team. The coaches, however, did not budge.

For Gabay, another year of college without being on a team was never an option.

“Running is my life,” he said.

Later that week, on Nov. 16, Gabay asked his coaches to enter his name into the transfer portal, even though he did not want to leave Duke and had not planned on leaving Durham.

“I felt like I was left with no choice,” he said.

Kreis did not put his name in the transfer portal until spring 2024. He considered staying at Duke with the scholarship, even if it meant he couldn’t be part of the team, before deciding to forfeit that opportunity. By entering the transfer portal, athletes give their coaches the right to revoke scholarship money. That’s exactly what happened, and Kreis’ scholarship money was offered to an incoming graduate transfer, instead. Now, Kreis will neither attend graduate school at Duke nor continue his collegiate running career.

Upset about the loss of their senior teammates, the distance team opened their dialogue about unhappiness with the coaching staff, which inspired them to send the memo with their concerns to Austin. Even if most of the runners on the team weren’t facing the same difficulties as Kreis and Gabay, many of them had plenty to say about the neglect from Reckart.

“She only really paid attention to guys who performed well,” Armentrout said. “Not only did we not feel supported, we felt neglected.”

“Unless you were the very fastest guy, you don’t get that much attention,” Kreis said.

Many of Reckart’s runners — Kreis, Gabay, Armentrout and the anonymous runner all included — explained that their relationship with their coach sometimes put them in a difficult position when recruits would visit Duke.

“A lot of the time it seemed you had to tell the partial truth on visits … you kind of leave a few stones unturned if you want to win people over,” Kreis said. He did add, however, that the camaraderie he felt with his teammates always persisted, despite issues with the coaching staff, and he generally enjoyed being an athlete at Duke.

None of the athletes on the women’s team were willing to speak to The Chronicle on the record, though all but one of them signed the memo sent to Duke Athletics. The smaller number of women on the cross country team —15 to the men’s 24 —reflects the discomfort that exists amongst the women. After earning 2022 ACC Freshman of the Year, Dalia Frias, the second-fastest runner on the women’s team, left the Blue Devils. So did would-be senior Presley Miles, who left almost immediately after she began running for Reckart.

Reckart did not finish out the season with the team. The day after Wilbourn announced that the distance coach would not return for another year — in late March — the athletes watched Reckart engage in a heated conversation with Cooke in the early minutes of practice. Reckart abruptly left the track, leaving Cooke to run the rest of practice.

That Tuesday was the last time any runners spoke with Reckart in person.

Wilbourn invited the distance team to a Zoom meeting March 27 during which he informed the athletes that Reckart would continue to be available for the remainder of the outdoor track season as a “coaching consultant” if they chose to reach out to her. Her role would allow her to contribute to training plans but do little else. Cooke would lead practices for the distance team for the rest of the season.

Following the May 16 release about Reckart's departure, the program announced Reckart’s replacement. Kevin Jermyn, who coached the program between 2000 and 2014, will now make his return to Durham.