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.”