Season Review: 2017-18 Michigan Men's Track and Field
7/18/2018 11:45:00 AM | Men's Track & Field
NCAA Outdoor Championships: T20th (14 points)
Big Ten Outdoor Championships: 4th (84 points)
Big Ten Indoor Championships: 6th (57 points)
The University of Michigan men's track and field team, led by head coaches Jerry Clayton and James Henry, proved its mettle as the best-rounded track and field / cross country program in the Big Ten Conference during the 2017-18 academic year. No other school in the conference was able to match the Wolverines' feat of placing top-six at the Big Ten Championships for cross country, indoor track and field, and outdoor track and field; and no other school was able to match Michigan by placing at all three sports' NCAA Championship meets. Outdoors, Michigan was just four points from runner-up honors.
Led by unlikely national champion Ben Flanagan, the Wolverines also excelled at the individual level with five men who earned All-America honors and four who won Big Ten titles. Several others broke school records and positioned themselves among the best in the country and the best of all time.
The year also saw the Wolverines open up the state-of-the-art U-M Indoor Track Building at the Athletics South Performance and Competition Center. Michigan hosted four home events, including a quad-meet victory over rivals Ohio State and Michigan State (as well as national power Arkansas), and was awarded the duty of hosting the 2019 Big Ten Indoor Championships.
Distance
Ben Flanagan became the first Michigan man since John Scherer in 1988 and 1989 to claim the NCAA Outdoor Championships title at 10,000 meters, scoring an upset victory over pre-meet favorite Vincent Kiprop of Alabama in a sprint down the homestretch. Coming in ranked No. 23 in the field of 24, Flanagan stuck with the lead pack all the way through and unleashed a timely kick in the closing meters of the race to run 28:34.53 for a 39-second career best. ESPN cameras captured Flanagan's first words after winning the title, which propelled him to some Internet fame: "Where's my mom?"
Flanagan's national title came after winning the 10,000 title at the Big Ten Championships, and very nearly qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Championships with a 5,000-meter personal record of 13:48.58 over the winter. All of this success came despite limited training as he battled several injuries and after missing much of the 2017 campaign with injury. Taken together with his All-American cross country campaign, he was named Michigan's Male Athlete of the Year.
Up until Flanagan's NCAA victory, the biggest upset title of the year may have gone to Aaron Baumgarten, who won the Big Ten Outdoor 5,000-meter title. Running in the exhaustive heat that defined the Big Ten Outdoor meet, the former walk-on Baumgarten hammered away in the closing mile of the race and successfully dropped the rest of the field en route to a 14:21.28 victory by approximately two seconds.
Flanagan and Baumgarten carried the banner for a group of redshirt seniors in their final year at Michigan, many of whom scored to help the Wolverines' Big Ten team effort. Flanagan scored 13 points between indoors and outdoors, Baumgarten contributed 11 points, Billy Bund added six points, Micah Beller tallied five points, Connor Mora chipped in four points and Austin Benoit tacked on two.
Leading the way for the next generation of Michigan distance running excellence was Anthony Berry, a sophomore who finished fourth over 1,500 meters at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships and fifth in the Big Ten Indoor mile.
Throws
The 2018 season for the Michigan throwers -- a.k.a. The Meat Factory -- was one for the record books.
Joe Ellis and Grant Cartwright finished as the No. 2 weight throw duo in collegiate history, missing the combined teammate record by just four centimeters at the Big Ten Indoor Championships as they finished first and third, respectively. At Big Tens, Ellis notched a new school record at 23.64m (77 feet, 6.5 inches), with Cartwright not far behind at 22.87m (75-0.5). Ellis would finish fifth at NCAAs for first team All-America honors, with Cartwright in 11th to make the second team.
Ellis obliterated the hammer throw record book, surpassing his 70.98m (232-10) school record from last year 10 times throughout the spring. He topped out during the collegiate season at 72.72m (238-7) to finish runner-up at the Big Ten Championships -- the best runner-up mark in conference history -- but added more than a meter to his record with a 73.80m (242-1) heave at a summer meet at Ashland.
After coming just short of the indoor school record, shot putter Andrew Liskowitz not only broke the outdoor record but very nearly carried an average throw distance in excess of the old record. Headlined by a massive 20.28m (66-6.5) throw at Arkansas that wiped out Cody Riffle's previous record of 19.39m (63-7.5) from 2016, Liskowitz's 16 measured throws of the season averaged a distance of nearly 19.28m -- with six throws superior to the old record. He formed a formidable shot put duo with Cartwright, who himself exceeded Riffle's mark three times on the year and went as far as 19.61m (64-4). Liskowitz earned a pair of second team All-America honors indoors and outdoors, while Cartwright earned second team honors outdoors as the farthest-throwing 11th-placer in NCAA Championships history.
Cartwright finished his time at Michigan as one of just two men in collegiate history (Dan Taylor, Ohio State) to throw farther than 23 meters in the weight throw, 69 meters in the hammer throw, 19.50 meters in the shot put and 58 meters in the discus during a single collegiate career.
Sprints
Taylor McLaughlin replicated and improved upon the success of his 2016 freshman campaign with a new personal record in the 400-meter hurdles to go along with a fifth-place finish at NCAAs and a Big Ten title.
McLaughlin dipped below 50 seconds six times in 2018 -- a barrier he did not cross as a sophomore in 2017 and that he crossed five times in 2016 -- en route to a new career-best 49.10 in the USATF Championships semifinals. Only twice in his last eight races did he rise above 50 seconds.
A young corps of Wolverines joined McLaughlin in the 400-meter hurdles, led by Roland Amarteifio. The sophomore had a big breakthrough at the Big Ten Championships to finish fifth in the 400H final in 51.73 and eighth in the 110H final with a new career-best 14.11 (+2.0m/s). McLaughlin and Amarteifio combined with first-year Wolverines Noah Caudy and Sean Marshall to form the sixth-best quartet of 400-meter hurdlers in the country, per the USTFCCCA Event Squad Rankings.
Amarteifio is also at the head of a young 110-meter hurdles corps that is among the best in the country. Teammate Sierra Hendrix-Williams had a breakthrough of his own to make it through to the Big Ten final for a ninth-place finish. Between Amarteifio, Hendrix-Williams, Caudy and Marshall, the Wolverines have the 14th-deepest group of 110-meter hurdlers in the country.
Michigan's relays came through to score points for the Wolverines at the conference level, finishing seventh in the indoor 4x400 and outdoor 4x100, and eighth in the outdoor 4x400.
Jumps
In a triumphant return from a full year lost to injury, high jumper Brandon Piwinski went on a postseason tear to close out the outdoor campaign. Following a win at the National Relay Championships, Piwinski cleared a college career-best 2.14m (7-0.25) to take fifth at the Big Ten Championships and advance to the NCAA East Prelims. He battled through tropical-storm conditions at the Prelims to advance to the NCAA Championships, where he finished 18th with a mark of 2.08m (6-9.75). He was the first Wolverine to clear seven feet since 2014, and the first to make the NCAA Championships since the mid-1990s.
Kevin Stephens closed out his Michigan triple jump career doing what he did best as a Wolverine: showing up in the biggest meets. The winter saw him bring his indoor career to its conclusion with a lifetime-best 15.75m (51-8.25) leap for fourth place. Outdoors, he took fifth with a then-outdoor PR 15.66m (51-4.5; -0.8m/s) jump at the Big Ten Championships, and followed it up with a one-centimeter improvement at the NCAA East Prelims to just miss qualifying for the NCAA Championships by two places. Over the last three years of him U-M career, he scored at five of the six Big Ten championships.
Honors and Awards
Grant
Cartwright
Joe
Ellis
Ben
Flanagan
Andrew
Liskowitz
Taylor
McLaughlin
National Champion
Ben Flanagan (outdoor / 10,000 meters)
USTFCCCA All-America
First Team: Joe Ellis (indoor / weight throw)
First Team: Ben Flanagan (outdoor / 10,000 meters)
First Team: Taylor McLaughlin (outdoor / 400m hurdles)
Second Team: Grant Cartwright (indoor / weight throw)
Second Team: Grant Cartwright (outdoor / shot put)
Second Team: Andrew Liskowitz (indoor / shot put)
Second Team: Andrew Liskowitz (outdoor / shot put)
USTFCCCA Honorable Mention
Brandon Piwinski (outdoor / high jump)
USTFCCCA Great Lakes Region Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year
Taylor McLaughlin
Big Ten Champions / First-Team All-Big Ten
Aaron Baumgarten (outdoor / 5,000 meters)
Joe Ellis (indoor / weight throw)
Ben Flanagan (outdoor / 10,000 meters)
Taylor McLaughlin (outdoor / 400m hurdles)
Second-Team All-Big Ten
Joe Ellis (outdoor / hammer throw)
Big Ten Outstanding Sportsmanship Award
Ben Flanagan
Big Ten Athlete of the Week
Andrew Liskowitz (May 2)
Joe Ellis (Feb. 7, Jan. 24)
Big Ten Distinguished Scholar
Austin Benoit, Sr., Mechanical Engineering, Rockford, Mich.
Billy Bund, Sr., Economics, Lake Forest, Ill.
Ben Flanagan, Gr., Interpersonal Practice/Mental Health MSW, Kitchener, Ontario
Kevin Haughn, Sr., Aerospace Engineering, Portage, Mich.
Jacob Lee, So., LSA Undeclared, Fenton, Mich.
Matt Plowman, Jr., Industrial & Operations Engineering, Elmhurst, Ill.
Academic All-Big Ten
Roland Amarteifio, So., Environment
Chase Barnett, Sr., Sport Management
Aaron Baumgarten, Sr, Mechanical Engineering MSE
Austin Benoit, Sr., Mechanical Engineering
Billy Bund, Sr., Economics
Nick Burkhalter, Jr., Electrical Engineering
Ben Flanagan, Sr., Interpersonal Practice/Mental Health MSW
Stephen Hagen, So., Economics
Kevin Hall, Jr., Economics
Isaac Harding, So., Undeclared
Kevin Haughn, Sr., Aerospace Engineering
Jordy Hewitt, Jr., International Studies
Ben Hill, Jr., Elementary Education
Jacob Lee, So., LSA Undeclared
Andrew Lorant, So., LSA Undeclared
Taylor McLaughlin, Jr., Mechanical Engineering
Garrett McPeek , Jr., Mechanical Engineering
Connor Mora, Sr., Sport Management
Manning Plater, So., Undeclared
Matt Plowman, Jr., Industrial and Operational Engineering
Isaac Skinner, So., Data Science
Max Wagner, So., Neuroscience
Blake Washington, Jr., Computer Science
Ryan Wilkie, Sr., Industrial and Operational Engineering
Players Mentioned
