2B — November 16, 2015
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘M’ wins fourth regional 
title in past five seasons

By LANEY BYLER

For the Daily

The 
Michigan 
women’s 

cross country team claimed the 
NCAA Great Lakes Regional 
title Friday at the Tom Zimmer 
Championship 
Course 
in 

Madison. The victory earned the 
Wolverines a spot in the NCAA 
Championships next week.

The 
seventh-ranked 

Wolverines took first place in a 
31-team pool with a final score of 
69 points — a solid 10-point lead 
over runner-up Notre Dame, 
which finished with a final 
score of 79 points. The regional 
title is Michigan’s fourth in the 
past five seasons and the 10th in 
program history.

The Wolverines were led 

by junior Erin Finn, who took 
fifth with a time of 20:44.3 
and was the highest-placing 
Michigan runner. While strong 
winds made the 6,000-meter 
course more challenging, Finn 
believed her toughest obstacle 
was holding back while other 
runners were putting everything 
they had into the race.

“It was just managing myself,” 

Finn said, “knowing that I 
wanted to race conservatively 
so I would have more in the tank 
for next week, while other girls 

were racing really hard.”

Despite Finn’s solid finish, 

she credited the rest of her team 
for pulling off the win, noting 
that her teammates’ proximity 
to one another during the race 
helped the Wolverines claim the 
regional title.

“It’s definitely a whole-team 

contribution, and especially in 
a team sport like cross country,” 
Finn said. “One leader doesn’t 
really matter as much as the 
stretch. So it’s good that I got 
things going, but it mattered 
more that I had 
girls coming in 
close after me. 
That’s 
what 

helped us win 
today.”

Michigan 

had six runners 
place in the top 
25, 
including 

fifth-year senior Anna Pasternak, 
who took 11th with a time of 
20:54.7. Despite being a part of 
four Great Lakes Regional teams, 
Pasternak 
had 
never 
placed 

higher than 30th at the meet.

Senior Shannon Osika took 

16th shortly after Pasternak 
crossed the line, with a final 
time 
of 
20:59.6. 
Redshirt 

sophomores Gina Sereno and 
Jaimie Phelan finished 17th and 

20th, respectively, with times of 
21:00.0 and 21:01.4.

Michigan 
coach 
Mike 

McGuire, who has coached all 
of the Great Lakes Regional 
titles in Michigan history, said 
there was still work to do before 
the 
NCAA 
Championships 

next Saturday. He stressed that 
maintaining health and cleaning 
up small mistakes will help the 
team reach its ultimate goals.

“You always want to come 

out ranked higher than when 
you went in,” McGuire said. 

“We definitely 
want to strive 
to 
get 
on 

a 
podium, 

which 
is 

top 
four. 

We’ve 
had 

performances 
at 
various 

times in the 

season that would be worthy of 
podium finishes. We just have to 
get it done. It will take our best 
efforts, but it’s not an effort that 
we’re not capable of.”

The Wolverines will look to 

accomplish those goals next 
Saturday at the 2015 NCAA 
Championships in Louisville, 
Kentucky. It’s Michigan’s last 
chance to add to a successful 
season.

COURTESY OF MICHIGAN ATHLETICS

The Michigan women’s cross country team finished first out of 31 teams and beat second-place Notre Dame by 10 points.

MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY
Ferlic paces Michigan to 
regional championship

First-place finish 
puts ‘M’ in NCAA 
Championships for 
fifth straight season

By SYLVANNA GROSS

Daily Sports Writer

Fifth-year 
senior 
Mason 

Ferlic was not going to lose.

In the last 400 meters of 

the Great Lakes Regional in 
Madison, he was head-to-head 
with the same athlete he lost 
the individual title to at the Big 
Ten Championship on Nov. 1, 
and Ferlic refused to be second 
again. 

Ferlic 
didn’t 
lose 
it. 
He 

crossed the finish line at 30:18.3 
to claim the win over Purdue’s 
Matt McClintock, who crossed 
just two seconds after. Ferlic’s 
team did well too, as the No. 5 
Michigan men’s cross country 
team won the event. 

“Coming down the home 

stretch, I knew I had the win,” 
Ferlic said. “McClintock and I 
have been great rivals, but it was 
nice to flip the tables on him. I 
have a lot of respect for that guy, 
but I had a little bit of fire under 
me in the last 400 meters of the 
race — where me and him were 
duking it out. I said to myself, 
‘I’m not losing to him today.’

“I just wanted to make it 

a solid effort from the gun. I 
wanted to settle into a rhythm. 
I knew if I started off well, I was 
going to be able to do it if I stayed 
relaxed and controlled myself. I 
told myself I was going to go for 
a win.”

Not only did he go for the win, 

the team did, too. 

This 
weekend, 
Michigan 

travelled 
to 
Wisconsin 
to 

compete in the Great Lakes 
Regional. As is becoming the 
norm for the Wolverines, they 
captured the title with a total of 
67 points on the 10,000-meter 
course. All five of their scorers 

finished within the top 25, with 
redshirt junior Nick Renberg 
running a personal best of 
31:08.4 to place 15th. 

The commanding win comes 

right after Michigan claimed 
the Big Ten title and just before 
it will compete at the NCAA 
Championships. The last time 
the team won both the Big Ten 
and Great Lakes Regional title, 
in 1997, the team placed fourth at 
the NCAA Championships. That 
year, current Michigan coach 
Kevin Sullivan placed second in 
the nation.

The goal for the current 

Wolverine team is to replicate 
the performance from 1997 with 
a top-four team finish. Sullivan 
just wants his team to be on that 
podium. 

“It’s a big deal to win a regional 

championship,” Sullivan said. 
“When 
we 

came in this 
season, 
this 

was our goal. 
But now, we’re 
starting 
to 

reevaluate 
our goals. We 
wanted to be 
a top team at 
nationals, but 
now we would 
love to take a 
crack at being one of the top four 
teams.”

This is the second time in 

three 
years 
that 
Michigan 

has claimed the Great Lakes 
Regional title. The Wolverines 
have won the event just four 
times in program history. 

A part of the team that made 

history, besides Renberg and 
Ferlic, were junior Ben Flanagan 
in 11th (30:54.2), senior Tony 
Smoragiewiecz in 18th (31:12.0) 
and redshirt sophomore Aaron 
Baumgarten in 22nd (31:15.4). 
Other 
Michigan 
finishers 

included senior August Pappas 
in 31st (31:31.5) and fifth-year 
senior Nick Posada in 60th 
(32:15.7). 

Notably, the women’s cross 

country team also took home the 
title. This is the second time in 
program history that both the 
men’s and women’s teams have 
won in the same year — the last 
time being in 2013. 

But that’s not to say the 

Wolverines ran faster than they 
ever have Friday. Ferlic thinks 
they just ran smart. 

“I don’t think it was a heroic 

effort by the team,” Ferlic said. 
“We did what we had to do. 
We were smart. We got the job 
done. We came out with a good 
amount of emotional energy 
without spending too much 
physical energy — which is what 
you want to do.”

The athletes were facing up 

to 
25-mile-per-hour 
winds. 

For Ferlic and other Michigan 
athletes, 
the 
key 
was 
to 

recognize the challenge that 

the 
wind 

presented 
when it was 
facing 
them. 

Ferlic said it 
felt like “you 
were standing 
still,” 
but 

when 
the 

wind was at 
their back, the 
runners could 
make up for 

the time lost. In doing so, the 
athletes struck a balance and 
matched their efforts against 
and with the wind. 

Regardless of the race strategy 

when dealing with weather, not 
much else has changed these 
past few meets. And, most likely, 
not much will change for the last 
meet of the season at the NCAA 
Championships in Louisville, 
Kentucky, on Nov. 21. 

“We have a good thing going 

this year,” Sullivan said. “It’s 
like, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. 
We’ve had the same intentions 
with the same goals in mind all 
season, and we didn’t change 
much up. We’re not going to 
change much up going into 
nationals, either.” 

“Coming down 

the home 

stretch, I knew I 

had the win.”

SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN

The finish line

This is the position in which 

the Michigan cross country 
teams have put themselves. It 
was Thursday, the day before 
the Great Lakes Regional meet 
that decides qualifiers for the 
NCAA Championships, and the 
Wolverines 
were talking 
about the 
regional meet 
as a warmup.

“It’s just 

sort of an 
expectation at 
this point that 
we qualify for 
the national 
meet,” said 
Gina Sereno, 
a redshirt sophomore on the 
women’s team.

That’s what happens when 

you qualify for the NCAA 
Championships 13 straight 
times, six by winning the 
regional title, as the Michigan 
women have. In any sport, at any 
level, athletes refuse to look past 
any competition to the next. For 
the Wolverines, qualifying is a 
given. It’s the big picture they’re 
after now, the big picture they 
train the whole year for.

That big picture finishes 

Saturday at the NCAA 
Championships. And for the 
first time in recent memory, 
both teams are among the 
top contenders — the men are 
ranked No. 5 in the latest poll, 
the women No. 7.

So much of the focus is on 

that event that the Michigan 
women contemplated holding 
back a bit in the regional meet 
to conserve energy for this 
weekend. This is their biggest 
day of the year, and that’s the 
end of it. There’s no bowl game, 
no long postseason tournament, 
no national-television exposure. 
It’s intrinsically motivated: 
They compete to finish the best 
they can, with no wide-ranging 

implications beyond that.

Both Michigan teams will 

be right in the middle of things 
on race day, but a closer look 
reveals the different spots in 
which they find themselves.

The women have established 

themselves more in recent 
seasons. The Wolverines 
finished fifth at the NCAA 
Championships in 2012 and 
fourth in 2013, garnering a No. 1 
preseason ranking to start 2014.

But when you train the whole 

year for one event, everything 
has to fall into place for that 
event to work out. Last year, it 
didn’t. Two of Michigan’s top 
runners, Erin Finn and Shannon 
Osika, were injured late in the 
season. Neither ran in the NCAA 
Championships, and the team 
finished 18th.

Still, the powerhouse coach 

Mike McGuire has built doesn’t 
crumble with a couple of 
injuries. Finn, now a junior, 
and Osika, a senior, returned 
and stayed healthy. After the 
misfortune of last year, McGuire 
knows that’s no small feat.

“I think 

the biggest 
difference 
between last 
year and this 
year is we’re 
a team that 
physically is 
intact,” he said.

Other than 

that, the team 
is similar, with 
Finn, Osika 
and three finishers from the 
NCAA Championships in 2014 
leading the way. But last year’s 
ending wasn’t the Wolverines’ 
last setback.

On Nov. 1, Michigan traveled 

to the Big Ten Championships 
as a heavy favorite. But for 
the third straight year, the 
Wolverines failed to win.

Fortunately for them, they 

still had more competitions left 
— including the one that matters 
most.

“We’re just looking for a 

shot at redemption, really,” 
Sereno said. “We didn’t do as 
well at the Big Ten meet as 
we were expected to do, and I 
think everyone is looking for an 
opportunity to show what we’re 
really made of.”

* * *

In some ways, the men’s 

team’s path has been opposite 
the women’s. The men had 
missed four of 10 NCAA 
Championships heading into 
this season. For them, rather 
than a disappointment, 2014 was 
a building block. Under first-
year coach Kevin Sullivan, they 
jumped to 11th in the national 
meet — their highest finish 
since 2003 — and used that as a 
springboard to this year.

Two weeks ago, while the 

women’s team let a Big Ten 
championship slip away, the 
men’s team got that monkey off 

its back. After 
three straight 
second-place 
finishes, 
Michigan 
took home the 
title this year, 
its first since 
1998.

“The taste 

of almost 
being it and 
having the 

disappointment, those are tough 
bus rides back from the previous 
Big Ten Championships,” said 
fifth-year senior co-captain 
Mason Ferlic.

The year before Ferlic arrived 

at Michigan, the Wolverines 
took eighth at the Big Ten 
Championships. Since then, they 
finished in the top three in four 
straight years — but could never 

win.

“You’re kind of searching for 

the what-if,” Ferlic said.

So Michigan kept building, 

and this year there was no going 
back. In each of the previous 
four seasons, the Wolverines 
were in contention, but 
everything had to go right and 
everyone had to run perfectly 
for them to win.

This year, they were the clear 

favorite. Led by Ferlic — who 
has now been the top Michigan 
finisher in his last 17 races — 
they took home the trophy.

The Wolverines have rolled 

forward — more quickly, 
Sullivan admitted, than he 
expected when he took the 
job — to put themselves in this 
position so soon. No one on 
the current roster has been on 
a team that missed the NCAA 
Championships, but never have 
the Wolverines had a legitimate 
shot of reaching the podium as 
they do this season.

“We have the guys,” Ferlic 

said. “The team is solidified. 
We’ve put in all our hard work. 
This is the fun part. It’s where 
we get to prove it and race.

“We’re not coming into the 

postseason here feeling like we 
missed something mid-season. 
We’re coming in feeling like we 
did everything that needed to be 
done. And now it’s just time to 
prove it.”

* * *

The women have been in 

position for years but have 
struggled to put it all together 
lately. The men have been 
behind and haven’t put it all 
together until lately. This 
weekend, they will take the 
same bus to Louisville for a 
race in which they both have a 
chance.

As with any team, their 

fortunes have fluctuated over 
the years. This season, both are 

healthy, both are confident and 
both are talented. Both feel like 
things might finally be lining up 
for them.

“At this point, yes,” McGuire 

said. “Things can change. It’s a 
fickle sport. You have to be good, 
and you have to be lucky. We feel 
that we’re pretty good, and if the 
good fortunes stay with us, I like 
where this season can finish up.”

The preparations are almost 

over, and the anticipated day 
is almost here. Maybe things 
will bounce Michigan’s way 
Saturday. Maybe they won’t. 
All the Wolverines can do is put 
themselves in a position for it to 
come down to that.

“If you don’t feel prepared 

at this point, you won’t ever 
be prepared,” Ferlic said. “The 
work’s been done. The hay’s in 
the barn, you could say.”

Lourim can be reached 

at jlourim@umich.edu and 

on Twitter @jakelourim.

COURTESY OF MICHIGAN ATHLETICS

The men’s and women’s cross country teams took home regional titles and will each be contenders at the national meet.

JAKE
LOURIM

“This is the fun 
part. It’s where 
we get to prove 

it and race.”

“It’s definitely 
a whole-team 
contribution.”

