Season Review: 2018 Michigan Men's Cross Country
12/17/2018 4:00:00 PM | Men's Cross Country
NCAA Championships: 19th (483 points)
NCAA Great Lakes Regional: Third (109 points)
Big Ten Championships: Fourth (109 points)
A new era of University of Michigan men's cross country dawned in 2018, and it looks to be the beginning of another bright chapter in the program's history.
After losing the top three runners from last year's 10th-place NCAA Championships team, a fresh generation of Michigan talent was tasked with taking the reins for head coach Kevin Sullivan. Despite some up-and-down performances throughout the season, the Wolverines emerged from the fall with a 19th-place NCAA finish and among the nation's most promising young teams.
Led by All-American Jack Aho and consisting almost entirely of underclassmen -- only two seniors were on the roster for the 2018 season -- the Wolverines were one of the best pack-running teams in the country, and on multiple occasions proved to be among the deepest.
With the entire NCAA Championships contingent returning for another go in 2019, the future looks to only be getting brighter for the Michigan men.
Team Highlights
• With the departures of All-American Ben Flanagan and top-100 finishers Connor Mora and Aaron Baumgarten, the mantle of defending Michigan's Big Ten title and 10th-place NCAA Championships finish fell on a young roster led by NCAA returners Aho, Isaac Harding and Ben Hill.
• The full Michigan lineup would not debut against national-level competition until late September, due to Hurricane Florence canceling a mid-September race in North Carolina. While most of the Wolverines' top runners would ultimately take the weekend off from competition, the schedule-replacement Michigan State Spartan Invitational gave the Wolverines their first look at John Tatter, who would go on to become one of the nation's best true freshmen. In his first race in a Michigan uniform and his first eight-kilometer (4.97-mile) cross country race, Tatter finished in a respectable seventh place.
• Tatter was finally joined in action by the rest of the squad in a strong showing at the Wisconsin Nuttycombe Invitational (Sept. 28). Led by 58th-place Jacob Lee and with five top-100 finishers, the Wolverines had a strong 13th-place finish as a team despite entering as the 19th-highest-ranked squad in the field.
• Aho took his turn as the Wolverines' leading man in a return trip to Wisconsin two weekends later for the Pre-National Invitational (Oct. 13), finishing 53rd as one of seven Michigan runners in the top-90 -- a feat matched only by eventual national champion Northern Arizona. However, a lack of Wolverines in the front of the race relegated Michigan to 11th in the team standings, three spots lower than projected by the rankings.
• The Wolverines were unable to retain their Big Ten title, finishing fourth in a heated battle at the conference meet -- just one point behind Indiana and two points ahead of Michigan State. Jordy Hewitt led the way for Michigan, earning second team All-Big Ten honors with a 13th-place finish.
• Needing a strong performance at the 10-kilometer (6.22-mile) NCAA Great Lakes Regional (Nov. 9) to secure a return berth to the NCAA Championships, the Wolverines came through with a third-place finish that would ultimately be good enough to earn an at-large bid to nationals. Aho once more led the way -- foreshadowing a strong NCAA postseason for him -- in a 10th-place finish just ahead of 11th-place Isaac Harding, with Tatter coming through as Michigan's No. 3 in 20th place. All three would earn All-Great Lakes Region honors for their effort.
• The Michigan squad that lined up for the NCAA Championships (Nov. 17) was among the youngest of any team in the 31-team field. With two juniors, four sophomores and a true freshman, the Wolverines were one of only three teams in the Championships without a senior on its roster.
• Despite the youth, Michigan availed itself well with a strong 19th-place finish -- an improvement on the No. 20 rank it held entering the meet, and third among Big Ten teams, missing 18th-place Indiana by just 14 points (469-483). The Wolverines were led by Aho's gutsy 35th-place All-American run, with Tatter joining him in the top-100 with a 79th-place effort. Aho put himself at the front of the race right from the start and did not look back, settling into the 30s by the midpoint of the race and never letting that positioning go.
Individual Highlights
• Aho's 2018 season was a microcosm of the Wolverines' year as a whole -- up-and-down overall, but on the upswing when it mattered most. After a disappointing 22nd-place finish at the Big Ten Championships, he bounced back to finish 10th in the region and then 35th nationally for his first career All-America honor. He was the third-best finisher from the Big Ten conference at the NCAA Championships as one of the conference's three All-Americans. His performance was a drastic improvement from last year, when he finished 122nd as a true freshman. In fact, his year-to-year improvement of 87 positions was surpassed by only four athletes among the 30 2018 All-Americans who also competed at nationals in 2017. He was the first sophomore to earn All-America honors since Mason Ferlic was 22nd in 2013.
• Tatter came a long way from that seventh-place debut in a Michigan uniform to a 79th-place NCAA Championships finish. Despite his inexperience in longer cross country races, Tatter only seemed to grow stronger as the races went longer. He was Michigan's sixth runner at the Nuttycombe Invitational before scoring for the Wolverines as the No. 5 runner at both Pre-Nationals and Big Tens. He moved up to No. 3 in the lineup at regionals -- his first 10K cross country race -- and topped out at No. 2 in the Michigan lineup at nationals. He was the third-highest-finishing true freshman at the NCAA Championships.
• After a solid regular season, Hill saved his best -- and most consistent -- work for the postseason. After running out to an early lead at the Big Ten Championships, he eventually settled in and finished 21st as Michigan's No. 2 scorer. He was equally strong at the NCAA Championships, finishing 132nd as the Wolverines' No. 3 scorer. Hill gained a reputation as a strong late-race kicker, always managing to run down numerous opponents in the closing stretch of a race to give the Michigan lineup a boost.
• While he only led the Michigan lineup once with a runner-up finish at the Michigan Open to kick off the fall, Harding was the lone Wolverine to finish among Michigan's top-five runners at each of its six main races. While he was Michigan's No. 5 scorer at the NCAA Championships in 175th place, his 11th-place finish at the NCAA Great Lakes Regional, arguably his top result of the season, was a significant factor in Michigan's ultimate qualification to the national meet.
Honors and Awards
Jack
Aho
John
Tatter
Isaac
Harding
Jordy
Hewitt
USTFCCCA All-America
Jack Aho
USTFCCCA All-Region
Jack Aho
Isaac Harding
John Tatter
Second-Team All-Big Ten
Jordy Hewitt
Academic All-Big Ten
Chase Barnett, Sr., Sport Management
Dominic Dimambro, So., Undeclared
Kevin Hall, Sr., Economics
Isaac Harding, Jr., Movement Science
Jordy Hewitt, Sr., Economics
Ben Hill, Sr., Elementary Education
Jared Hill, So., Engineering
Jacob Lee, Jr., Economics
Andrew Lorant, Jr., Economics
Jacob Keating, So., Engineering
Lewis Tate, So., Undeclared
Luke Wallace, So., Business Administration
Players Mentioned
