Season Review: 2018-19 Michigan Men's Track and Field
7/31/2019 1:55:00 PM | Men's Track & Field
NCAA Outdoor Championships: T26th (12 points)
NCAA Indoor Championships: T47th (3 points)
Big Ten Outdoor Championships: 6th (54.5 points)
Big Ten Indoor Championships: 8th (52 points)
As the careers of some of the most decorated student-athletes in University of Michigan men's track and field history came to a close and those of younger Wolverines blossomed in their own right, the 2019 season was one to remember for the program.
The Wolverines,led by head coaches Jerry Clayton and James Henry, earned five first-team All-America honors, two Big Ten titles, two school records and numerous national-level performances during an eventful 2018-19 academic year -- in addition to successfully hosting the first Big Ten Indoor Championships at the world-class U-M Indoor Track Building.
Outstanding Senior Class
It was a storybook ending for three standout Michigan seniors at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas, on June 5-7 as the trio of Joe Ellis, Taylor McLaughlin and Jack Lint all earned first-team All-America honors in their final collegiate appearances for Michigan.
Ellis took eighth in the hammer throw, giving him first-team All-America honors in the event for the second time in his career. Combined with his three first-team All-America honors from the indoor weight throw event -- which included a sixth-place finish during this academic year -- he finished his career as the most decorated thrower of the program's modern era. In addition to those five All-America honors, he won three Big Ten titles and owns the school records for both the hammer and weight throws.
McLaughlin, who battled back from an injury-delayed start to his outdoor campaign that saw him run his first 400-meter hurdles race just a month before NCAAs, took fourth in his signature event to earn his third first-team All-America plaudit. No other man in school history has accomplished that feat in the 400-meter/440-yard hurdles, and only five others have done it in any other single event. McLaughlin ran a career-best 48.85 in the final for the fastest time ever run by a Michigan man during the collegiate season (the school record 48.30 by Neil Gardner was run at the 1996 Olympics), and it was fast enough to achieve the qualifying standard for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Though Lint, a graduate transfer from Virginia, was only in Ann Arbor for a single season of collegiate eligibility, he made the most of it. As top contenders in the NCAA Championships decathlon field stumbled around him, he had a career-best week en route to a fourth-place finish with a score of 7,738 points. The score bolstered his standing as the second-best decathlete in school history, and was enough to earn him Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year honors after the conclusion of the championships. He also finished as the silver medalist at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships, an honor shared by the aforementioned Ellis and McLaughlin.
Andrew Liskowitz
Ellis, Lint and McLaughlin were joined as an outdoor first-team All-American by shot putter Andrew Liskowitz. A junior in 2019, Liskowitz had a breakthrough season that included not only that outdoor honor, but also an indoor second-team All-America award, an indoor Big Ten title and school records both indoors and outdoors. His summer season also saw him claim his first international medal and a 12th-place finish at the USATF Outdoor Championships.
During the winter, Liskowitz posted a come-from-behind win in school-record fashion to take the Big Ten Indoor Championships shot put title on his home track with a throw of 19.67m (64 feet, 6.5 inches). He would go on to earn second-team All-America honors with a 13th-place finish at the NCAA Championships.
Outdoors is where he started picking up more momentum. He upset former IAAF world champion and Olympic silver medalist Joe Kovacs to win the Virginia Challenge with a heave of 20.23m (66-4.5) in what would be the first of five meets farther than 20 meters over the course of the outdoor campaign. Though he finished third at Big Tens, he rallied in a big way at the NCAA Championships with an eighth-place finish for his first first-team All-America honor.
After the collegiate season, he heaved a titanic 21.15m (69-4.75) at the Michigan Throws Tune-Up to not only break his own school record, but also achieve qualifying standards for the 2019 IAAF World Championships and the 2020 Olympics. Liskowitz also moved to No. 22 in collegiate outdoor history in the event.
He followed that with a silver-medal performance at the 2019 World University Games in Naples, Italy, throwing 20.49m (67-2.75) to finish second wearing the Red, White and Blue of the United States.
Liskowitz closed out his 2019 campaign with a strong 12th-place finish at the USATF Outdoor Championships. With a best throw of 19.93m (65-4.75), he was the second-best collegian in the field of five. He won a tiebreak over NCAA Outdoor champion Tripp Piperi of Texas to finish 12th.
Looking forward, his school-record throw from June positions him as the nation's second-best returning thrower for the 2020 campaign.
Notable Highlights
• The 4x400 relay team of Desmond Melson, Ian Davis, Alex Schwedt and Vail Hartman was the second-to-last team of 24 to qualify into the NCAA East Preliminary Rounds. A strong 3:07.31 -- capped off by a lean at the line by Hartman to edge out Mississippi State -- put the Wolverines through to the NCAA Championships, where they again were seeded 23rd of 24. An equally strong 3:07.09 in the prelims, coupled with several disqualifications from other teams, pushed the squad to 14th overall for second-team All-America honors. All four men will return for the 2020 season to build on their big breakthrough.
• Perhaps no single athlete on the team made bigger strides towards the nation's top tier than did Roland Amarteifio. The junior advanced to his first NCAA Championships by way of a career-best 50.46 performance in the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA East Preliminary Rounds, which also moved him to No. 4 in school history in the event. He also was a triple-scorer at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships with a fourth-place finish in the 400 hurdles, an eighth-place showing in the 110-meter hurdles and a leg of the sixth-place 4x400 relay. Indoors, he moved to No. 2 in school history in the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 7.90 to ultimately finish sixth in the Big Ten final. Teammates Sierra Hendrix-Williams and Job Mayhue also dipped below eight seconds at Big Tens, which marked the first time three Michigan men have ever done that in the same meet. They finished sixth, seventh and eighth in the final.
• The distance crew put up some big performances throughout the 2019 campaign. Jack Aho was strong during the regular season as he dipped below eight minutes for 3,000 meters indoors and went sub-14:00 in the 5,000 meters outdoors. Devin Meyrer was the Wolverines' top point scorer at conference championship meets as he took fourth in the outdoor 10,000-meter final. Chase Barnett and Ben Hill came within one and two seconds, respectively, of cracking four minutes in the mile indoors, and both scored for the Wolverines in the event at the Big Ten Indoor Championships. Michigan also found a pair of breakout 3,000-meter steeplechase performers in Lewis Tate and Joost Plaetinck. After finishing sixth and eighth at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships, both men cracked the nine-minute threshold in the event at the East Prelims, with Tate moving to No. 10 in school history at 8:52.34.
• Including the aforementioned Davis and Mayhue, the freshman class showed flashes of the bright future to come in Ann Arbor. Mayhue clocked 13.99 in the outdoor 110-meter hurdles to qualify for both the Big Ten Outdoor Championships final at the NCAA East Prelims. The Wolverines also received big performances from sprinter Asani Hampton (fastest debut by a freshman 60-meter sprinter), John Meyer (freshman record in the shot put), Cole Johnson (winner of the Simmons-Harvey Big Ten Invitational 800 meters) and Will Landowne (seventh in the Big Ten Indoor Championships 3,000 meters), among others.
Honors and Awards
Joe
Ellis
Jack
Lint
Andrew
Liskowitz
Taylor
McLaughlin
USTFCCCA All-America
First Team: Joe Ellis (indoor / weight throw)
First Team: Joe Ellis (outdoor / hammer throw)
First Team: Jack Lint (outdoor / decathlon)
First Team: Andrew Liskowitz (outdoor / shot put)
First Team: Taylor McLaughlin (outdoor / 400m hurdles)
Second Team: Desmond Melson, Ian Davis, Alex Schwedt, Vail Hartman (outdoor / 4x400 relay)
USTFCCCA Honorable Mention
Roland Amarteifio (outdoor / 400m hurdles)
Big Ten Outdoor Field Athlete of the Year
Jack Lint
Big Ten Indoor Field Athlete of the Championships
Joe Ellis
Big Ten Champions / First-Team All-Big Ten
Joe Ellis (indoor / weight throw)
Andrew Liskowitz (indoor / shot put)
Second-Team All-Big Ten
Joe Ellis (outdoor / hammer throw)
Jack Lint (outdoor / decathlon)
Taylor McLaughlin (outdoor / 400m hurdles)
Big Ten Athlete of the Week
Jack Lint (April 10)
Joe Ellis (Feb. 13, Jan. 23)
Andrew Liskowitz (Jan. 16)
USTFCCCA All-Academic Team
Michigan, 3.08 cumulative GPA
USTFCCCA All-Academic Individuals
Roland Amarteifio / Environment BS
Joe Ellis / Educational Studies MA
Isaac Harding / Movement Science BS
Vail Hartman / LSA Undeclared
Ben Hill / Education Elem ABEd
Jack Lint / Master of Science in Information MSI
Taylor McLaughlin / Mechanical Engineering BSE
Devin Meyrer / Biopsychology, Cognition & Neuroscience BS
Manning Plater / Sport Management BA
Lewis Tate / LSA Undeclared
Max Wagner / Neuroscience BS
Big Ten Distinguished Scholar
Chase Barnett, Sr., Sport Management
Kevin Hall, Sr., Economics
Ben Hill, Sr., Elementary Education
Jacob Keating, So., Chemical Engineering
Jack Lint, Gr., Information M.S.
Devin Meyrer, Jr., Biopsychology, Cognition & Neuroscience
Matt Plowman, Sr., Industrial & Operations Engineering
Max Wagner, Jr., Neuroscience
Academic All-Big Ten
Jack Aho, So., Sport Management
Roland Amarteifio, Jr., Environment
Chase Barnett, Gr., Sport Management
Daniel Butael, So., Computer Science
Joe Ellis, Gr., Educational Studies
Stephen Hagen, Jr., Economics
Kevin Hall, Sr., Economics
Isaac Harding, Jr., Movement Science
Vail Hartman, So., LSA Undeclared
Jordy Hewitt, Sr., Economics and International Studies
Ben Hill, Sr., Education Elem
Jared Hill, So., Aerospace Engineering
Jacob Keating, So., Chemical Engineering
Jacob Lee, Jr., Economics
Jack Lint, Gr., Master of Science in Information
Andrew Liskowitz, Sr., International Studies
Joe McCarthy, Jr., Political Science
Taylor McLaughlin, Sr., Mechanical Engineering
Devin Meyrer, Jr., Biopsychology, Cognition & Neuroscience
Manning Plater, Jr., Sport Management
Matt Plowman, Sr., Industrial & Operations Engineering
Lewis Tate, So., LSA Undeclared
Max Wagner, Jr., Neuroscience
Luke Wallace, So., Business Administration
Blake Washington, Sr., Cognitive Science
Ryan Wilkie, Gr., Management
Players Mentioned
