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Thursday, June 16, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Women’s track and field places 20th
at NCAA Outdoor Championships
By MATTHEW KENNEDY
Daily Sports Writer
Competing at its final meet of
the season, the Michigan women’s
track and field team had four
athletes earn All-American honors
on its way to a top-20 finish.
Despite the strong performance,
though, not all of the races went as
well as planned.
Five Wolverines competed at
Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore.,
in three different events, with the
first events taking place Thursday.
While four of the Michigan
runners had preliminary races
that day, sophomore Gina Sereno
competed in the lone race of the
10,0000-meter run. Due to its
length, the event does not have a
preliminary run, and the only run
is for the championship.
With little room for error,
Sereno ran a career-best time
of 33:35.16 to capture 13th place
— good enough for All-America
honors. Sereno’s time was almost
exactly a minute behind the
championship performance.
After an uneventful day Friday
for the Wolverines, three runners
returned to the track for final
races Saturday.
Fifth-year
senior
Shannon
Osika and redshirt sophomore
Jaimie Phelan both qualified for
the 1,500-meter run Saturday,
making two of three Michigan
runners qualify for the finals after
fifth-year senior Devon Hoppe
narrowly missed out on advancing.
The event was arguably the
Wolverines’ best on the day, with
Osika taking fourth place and five
points with a time of 4:12.23, just
three seconds behind the victor.
Phelan also earned one point for
the team with her eighth-place
finish of 4:15.61.
“It was an awesome experience,”
Osika said. “It was my first race at
Hayward Field and it was a very
high energy facility. There were a
lot of fans and it was even better
getting to experience it with my
two teammates Devon and Jaimie.
To be able to run the prelim with
Devon and the final with Jaimie
was a really cool experience.”
The most anticipated event
of the weekend for Michigan
featured one of the Wolverines’
most-decorated runners of all-
time: senior Cindy Ofili.
Ofili
won
the
60-meter
hurdles at the NCAA Indoor
Championships in March, and
currently holds the seventh-fastest
time in the world in the event for
2016. After narrowly winning the
100-meter hurdles at the Big Ten
Championships last month, Ofili
seemed to be the odds-on-favorite
to take home the 100-meter
hurdles crown.
With an incredibly strong wind
of +3.8 behind Ofili — well above
the +2.0 threshold for records to
count — Ofili managed to get out to
an early lead. But she was moving
too fast and could not keep up the
pace, ultimately dropping all the
way down to fourth with a time
of 12.81 seconds. The finish still
provided the team with five points,
but after such a stellar regular
season, losing the final race by
0.27 seconds was not how most
envisioned the race going.
“That was the biggest positive
wind that she’s had in her life,
and she wasn’t quite sure how to
handle that,” said Michigan coach
James Henry. “She probably had
the best race of her life, and all of
that accumulating, it seemed to
her that the hurdles were getting
to her too soon and they were
too close and she just could not
navigate it.”
Still, the year was a memorable
one for the team. Michigan took
home both the Big Ten Indoor
Championship
and
Big
Ten
Outdoor Championship, and even
came in second in the Big Ten
Cross Country Championship. A
sixth-place at the NCAA Indoor
Championship followed by this
weekend’s
results
marks
the
first time since 2009 that the
Wolverines have finished in the
top 20 of both championships.
“In the end, we always want
to be in a position to win,” Henry
said. “But to come out as a winner
it made me very happy that the
girls listened and that they worked
hard, and I’m just so thankful for
the senior class to go out the way
it did because these kids that are
graduating have been some of the
best students and some of the best
athletes. More importantly, they
have been some of the best people
that have come to the University
of Michigan, and I am so happy to
have coached them.”
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Cindy Ofili could not take home the 100-meter hurdles championship, finishing fourth.
Michigan earns best
NCAA finish since 1997
By MIKE PERSAK
Daily Sports Writer
The Michigan men’s track
and field team had finished in
the top 15 at the NCAA Outdoor
Championships only once in the
last 55 seasons. That changed
last week.
The
Wolverines
sent
six
athletes to Eugene, Ore., who
combined to score 15 points —
a count good enough to pull
Michigan into a tie for 13th place
overall.
The highlight of the meet for
the Wolverines came from fifth-
year senior distance runner
Mason Ferlic in the 3,000-meter
steeplechase. Ferlic entered the
meet ranked No. 1 nationally in
the event, and backed up that
ranking convincingly. Heading
into the final lap of the race, the
fifth-year senior had opened
up a lead so large that even a
stumble when landing in the
final water pit didn’t thwart
his chances of finishing first.
Ferlic still won the race easily,
finishing 3.51 seconds ahead of
the second-place runner.
“He’s been so focused his
entire career here at Michigan,”
said
Michigan
coach
Jerry
Clayton. “But he’s been so
dominant in that event every
time he’s raced this year. He’s
pretty much (gone) out, taken
control of the race from the
beginning, and that led to him
hitting the qualifying standard
for the Olympic Trials, and
then he carried that right on
through the (Big Ten Outdoor
Championships),
the
(NCAA
Preliminary Rounds) and even
in the qualifying rounds.
“It’s just a credit to him, and
what an outstanding way to
finish his career as a Wolverine.”
Freshman
sprinter
Taylor
McLaughlin also became an All-
American this weekend in the
400-meter hurdles by finishing
fifth in the event with a time of
49.74 seconds, only .01 seconds
away from his personal record.
McLaughlin
finished
first
among all freshmen competing
in the 400-meter hurdles, and
with all of the success that he
has had in his rookie season,
the future looks bright for the
freshman.
“I don’t like to put predictions
or limits on people,” Clayton
said. “I think he can be as good
as he wants to be. The talent is
there. If he stays focused … we
just feel really confident (in
McLaughlin). I don’t anticipate
any problems from what I’ve
seen. He’s just a great person,
and that’s the bottom line.”
Ferlic
and
McLaughlin
weren’t the only All-Americans
for Michigan. Senior Steven
Bastien finished eighth in the
decathlon, the lowest finish
possible to still qualify for All-
American
honors.
Bastien’s
status as an All-American was
in doubt right up until the last
event of the decathlon: the
1,500-meter run.
Bastien entered the race in
ninth place, but finished the
race with a personal record time
of 4:29.82. The time was good
enough to put Bastien in eighth
place, just five points ahead of
Georgia’s Devon Williams.
The 13th place finish for the
Wolverines is their best since
1997, and it comes in just the
third year under Clayton, who
was also surprised of the success
early in his tenure at Michigan.
“When I looked at the job
when I was interviewed, I felt,
with the tradition Michigan
had, there was no reason why
we couldn’t be better than they
were,” Clayton said. “After I was
here a year, I thought, ‘Well this
is going to take a little bit longer.’
I thought we were looking at five
or six years. But obviously the
athletes have responded.”
Michigan will now look to
take the momentum from the
NCAA Outdoor Championships
into the offseason in multiple
facets. The coaches will continue
recruiting and some of the
athletes themselves will prepare
to compete in the Olympic Trials
in July.
Though the 13th-place finish
was the best in recent history,
the Wolverines have a lot to look
forward to. Because with young
guys like McLaughlin returning
and the successes of the program
as a whole, Michigan will have
plenty of experience to lean on
as it heads into next season.
MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
SPORTS