11
Thursday, May 18, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com SPORTS
Sereno claims Big Ten distance sweep
Just 200 meters separated Gina
Sereno from history.
The Michigan senior had already
won the 10,000 meter race Friday at
the Big Ten Championships. And if
she could pull away from a pack of
seven on the final straightaway of the
5,000 meter race, she would become
just the third woman in history to
claim conference titles in both races
in consecutive years.
“I said, ‘if you want to go, you gotta
go now’,” Sereno said. “And I just gave
it everything I got.”
It turns out that was enough.
Sereno surged into the lead out of the
final turn, and outdueled Indiana’s
Katherine Receveur to the finish to
win the race with a time of 16:23.24,
just five-hundredths of a second
ahead of her Hoosier rival.
“I had no idea (that I won),
honestly,” Sereno said. “I made the
first move, and she made the last
move. It’s hard to tell because I was
just looking forward, and I don’t
know if she let up or I surged.”
Sereno’s victory Sunday closely
mirrored her 10,000 meter win from
two days earlier. She stayed solidly in
the lead pack for the majority of the
race, and maintained her position at
the front as the pace began to drop
with a mile to go. She then made her
move with half a lap left — a move
she would repeat from the same spot
Sunday — and outkicked Penn State’s
Jillian Hunsberger and Indiana’s
Margaret Allen to win with a time of
33:53.02 and a two-second margin of
victory.
“The last 200 meters I never really
know what to expect,” Sereno said. “I
always tell myself to just push harder
and harder and harder until there’s
nothing physically left in the tank.”
Sereno led for most of the 5,000
meters, but surrendered the lead to
Penn State’s Tessa Barrett, and later
Receveur, late in the race. Despite
her opponent’s surge, and possible
fatigue from her efforts Friday, she
maintained her composure and place
in the pack, and was able to position
herself for the home stretch.
“I just tell myself to keep my eyes
on the back of the jersey in front of
me and not let the distance increase
between myself and that jersey,” she
said. “I kind of imagine there’s a string
between my forehead and the back of
someone else. It’s about keeping a level
head and maintaining focus.”
Not only did Sereno become the
first woman since Michigan’s Mindy
Rowand in 1989 and 1990 to win the
10,000 and 5,000 two straight years,
her distance sweep powered the
Michigan women’s track and field
team to a fifth-place overall finish at
the Big Ten Championships, hosted
by Penn State this weekend. The
Wolverines’ score of 79 points was 54
points behind the champion, Purdue.
Michigan’s performance was most
impressive when considering it came
into the meet fairly shorthanded,
with injuries sapping the team of its
usual depth. Perhaps most notably,
junior Erin Finn — the runner-up in
the 5,000 meters at the NCAA Indoor
Championships earlier this year —
did not compete due to injury.
“We didn’t have what we normally
have, but the kids at the top did very
well,” said Michigan coach James
Henry. “That small group of young
ladies held it down.”
That group — consisting of Sereno,
juniors
Claire
Kieffer-Wright,
Aaron Howell and Jaimie Phelan
— contributed 50 points to the
Wolverines’ total with five individual
victories.
Kieffer-Wright took home the
high jump title Saturday in a down-
to-the-wire battle, needing all three
attempts to clear the barrier on
three of her final four jumps. She set
a personal best with her winning
height of 1.84 meters (6.075 feet) —
the first time she has surpassed six
feet since high school.
In the heptathlon, Howell didn’t
place first in any individual event, but
claimed the title with a score of 5,359,
winning by 36 points over Maryland’s
Peyton Wade. Howell sealed her
victory with a third-place finish in
the final event, the 800 meters, while
also placing second in the javelin.
Phelan
continued
Michigan’s
distance dominance Sunday with
her title in the 1,500 meters. After a
conservatively-paced first three laps —
no lap was run faster than 70 seconds
— Phelan took off, running her final
lap in 62 seconds to finish with a time
of 4:21.17, just over half a second ahead
of Penn State’s Danae Rivers. Just an
hour after her victory, Phelan capped
off her meet with a third-place finish
in the 800 meters, just ahead of junior
Jamie Morrissey in fifth.
Michigan’s
five
individual
conference champions tied for the
second-most in program history. But
now, the Wolverines will seek to get
healthy as the NCAA Preliminary and
National meets approach, and they
will hope for a total team effort at full
strength.
JACOB SHAMES
Summer Managing Sports Editor
KEVIN ZHENG/Daily
Senior Gina Sereno became just the second woman to win a Big Ten title in both the 10,000 and 5,000 two straight years.
MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
Bastien, Ellis win Big
Ten titles for Wolverines
With one event left in the
decathlon — the 1,500 meters — at
the Big Ten Championships, Steven
Bastien sat in second place, trailing
Nebraska’s Cody Walton by 137
points. So the Michigan senior met
with one of his coaches to formulate
a plan.
“(The plan was) based on his
personal best and based on what I
needed to run, the type of splits I
would need to run for each lap, and
I just tried to execute that plan,”
Bastien said. “(My coach), as the
javelin finished, he immediately was
like, ‘You have to beat Cody by 20
seconds if you want to win’.”
A little less than halfway through
the race, Bastien was well on pace to
do so, with a 12-second lead over his
Cornhusker rival. Coming into the
final lap, Bastien had reached the
margin he needed, ahead of Walton
by 23 seconds. And he didn’t let up,
as he cruised to a time of 4:36.01 —
13 seconds ahead of second-place
finisher Andrew Huber of Indiana,
and 40 seconds ahead of Walton.
With his dominant performance
in the 1,500, Bastien became just
the second Wolverine to claim a
conference title in the decathlon,
with a score of 7,713 points. His
decathlon
championship,
along
with a record-breaking victory
from sophomore Joe Ellis in the
hammer throw, highlighted the
Michigan men’s track and field
team’s eighth-place finish at the Big
Ten Championships, hosted by Penn
State. The Wolverines scored a total
of 64 points, 53 behind the victorious
host Nittany Lions.
The decathlon victory is just the
latest addition to Bastien’s legacy.
The Saline product already holds
Michigan program records in the
heptathlon and decathlon, and won
the heptathlon at the Big Ten Indoor
Championships in 2016. He also has
earned
first-team
All-American
status three times, and qualified for
last year’s United States Olympic
Trials in the decathlon. But Bastien
says that these accomplishments pale
in comparison to what it means to
him to be a Wolverine.
“Just
running
for
Michigan
and having success here has been
an
accomplishment
that’s
been
really enjoyable,” Bastien said. “I
don’t think one (accomplishment)
stands out above any other. It’s just
that being able to have success at
Michigan has been really rewarding
because of the history the school
has, the individuals on the team and
the coaches that I have. The whole
atmosphere that Michigan offers is a
fun place to have success.”
The running and jumping events
proved most successful for Bastien.
Along with his 1,500 victory, he
won the 100-meter dash by .22
seconds and the 400-meter dash
by over a second, while outjumping
his competitors in the pole vault as
well. He also set a career-high in the
javelin, while tying his career-best in
the 110-meter hurdles. He even could
have potentially recorded a larger
score had it not been for unfortunate
fouls in the long jump and shot put.
Ellis’s hammer throw title was
the first time a Wolverine had won a
conference crown in that event in 87
years. And he won it in dominating
fashion — with a heave of 70.98
meters, he broke the program record
— which he himself had set just two
weeks ago — by 1.68 meters.
Ellis wasn’t the only highlight for
Michigan’s throwers, who had an
impressive showing as a unit. Junior
Grant Cartwright set career-bests
in both the discus and hammer
throw, finishing third and fourth,
respectively, in those events. He also
finished fourth in the shot put, right
behind redshirt freshman Andrew
Liskowitz.
“To have my family here watching
and supporting — for them being here
all the way, my dad’s seen pretty much
all my (personal records) from high
school in the weight and hammer and
now here,” Ellis said. “To have them
and two of my brothers and my mom,
words aren’t enough.”
Added Cartwright: “It’s just really
special. The biggest thing is to be here
with Joe — we’re brothers, we train
together, we do everything together.”
The
Wolverines’
distance
contingent also made several key
contributions, beginning with junior
Ben Flanagan, who finished eighth
in the 10,000 meters in his outdoor
season debut. Graduate senior Ned
Willig scored in two events — placing
fourth in the 1,500 meters and fifth
in the 800 — while junior Brennan
Munley was eighth in the 800. Junior
Connor Mora aided the effort with
two sixth-place showings, in the
3,000 meter steeplechase and 5,000
meter run.
JACOB SHAMES
Summer Managing Sports Editor