Michigan
NCAA Great Lakes Regional
Wolverine Women Ready for NCAA Great Lakes Regional
11/10/2021 2:12:00 PM | Women's Cross Country
THIS WEEK
Friday, Nov. 12 -- at NCAA Great Lakes Regional (Evansville, Ind.), 11 a.m. CST
Live Results
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The national No. 12-ranked University of Michigan women's cross country team will kick off the NCAA postseason this Friday (Nov. 12) at the Great Lakes Regional meet in Evansville, Ind., with a 20th-consecutive berth to the national championships on the line.
Almost exactly two weeks to the minute after a hard-fought, disappointing fourth-place showing at the Big Ten Championships, the Wolverine women will line up at 11 a.m. CST with their NCAA Championships fate in the balance for a six-kilometer (3.73-mile) circuit around the Angel Mounds State Historic Site.
Friday's lineup is limited to just the seven runners eligible for scoring, and will likely be led by the Wolverines' first-team All-Big Ten duo of narrow Big Ten runner-up Ericka VanderLende and Kayla Windemuller. The Michigan seven also could include Katelynne Hart, Anne Forsyth, Alice Hill, Samantha Tran, Samantha Saenz, Julia Vanitvelt, Aurora Rynda and Lucy Petee.
That group will be going for the Wolverines' 20th-straight ticket to the NCAA Cross Country Championships, which will be held next Saturday, Nov. 20, at Florida State, and the 28th team appearance in head coach Mike McGuire's 30-season tenure.
Only Stanford (28 years) and Michigan State (21 years) have longer active qualifying streaks.
Michigan also has won seven of the last nine NCAA Great Lakes Regional meets.
Still slotted in at No. 1 in the Great Lakes Region in the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association rankings, the Wolverines will face a rematch with two of the three teams that narrowly topped them at Big Tens, including Big Ten runner-up Wisconsin and third-place Michigan State.
The national No. 13 Badgers, ranked second in the region behind Michigan, beat the Wolverines by just seven points, while the national No. 16 Spartans, sitting at third in the region, topped U-M by just three points.
Michigan also will have to contend with four other teams that appeared in the latest edition of the USTFCCCA National Coaches' Poll, including No. 25 Notre Dame and the "also receiving votes" trio of MAC champion Toledo, Big East runner-up Butler and Indiana.
Those seven teams and others will be battling to secure the region's two automatic berths to Tallahassee. Only the top two teams in the standings are guaranteed to advance to nationals; teams finishing third or lower will be at the mercy of the at-large qualification process that takes into account regional finish and head-to-head victories over other NCAA-qualifying teams.
The Wolverines are aiming for one of the top two spots and an automatic berth, but did well during the fall -- despite a thinner regular-season schedule than most teams -- to accumulate head-to-head wins over Northeast Region leader No. 17 Syracuse, Mid-Atlantic Region leader No. 28 West Virginia and Wisconsin that could be beneficial in the at-large process.
Live results will be available through Primetime Timing. Updates will be posted throughout the race on the official @umichtrack social media channels.
Things to Know
• Michigan is coming off a hard-fought fourth-place finish at the Big Ten Championships, where the Wolverines were just 13 points behind champion Minnesota. Both individual runner-up Ericka VanderLende and sixth-place Kayla Windemuller were first team All-Big Ten honorees for their performances, while Katelynne Hart was just edged out at the line for second-team honors in 15th place.
• Despite the cold wind and pounding rain, VanderLende ran nearly 2.5 seconds faster per kilometer at Big Tens than she did on the same course in much better conditions at the Penn State National Open two weekends earlier. Windemuller was similarly strong with a 1.5-second per kilometer improvement despite the conditions.
• Samantha Tran, the Wolverines' No. 6 runner at Big Tens, is showing signs of recapturing the form from earlier this spring that netted her a top-100 finish at NCAAs and Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. Over the last mile and a quarter of her 37th-place finish, she was the 18th-fastest woman in the field and moved up nine spots. In the last three-quarters of a mile, she was the 12th-fastest woman and claimed six of those nine spots during that time.
Course Description
Angel Mounds State Historic Site
Course Maps | Course Preview Video
Distance: Six kilometers (3.73 miles)
Max Elevation: 383 feet above sea level
Low Elevation: 368 feet above sea level
The course is situated on the grounds of the Angel Mounds State Historic site, which in the early 11th century through the 15th century was a significant population center for the Mississippian culture of Native Americans, according to Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. The site features the excavated remnants of earthen mounds that once supported human-built structures, and some of these mounds are among the largest prehistoric structures in the eastern United States, per the Central States Archaeological Journal.
With no more than 17 feet of elevation change between the course's lowest and highest points, this is the flattest course on which the Wolverines have or will run this fall. Rain is expected in the days leading up to the regional, potentially making for softer and muddier conditions -- though likely not as extreme as those faced last month at Big Tens.
Distances selected to match with intermediate checkpoints in live results
1st Kilometer: The course starts out straight on a downhill for nearly one-third of a mile to the course's lowest point, before a slight uphill that leads into the course's biggest climb after a gentle curve into a nearly half-mile straightaway that extends into the second kilometer.
2nd Kilometer: Tame by comparison to other courses on which the Wolverines have run this year, the biggest climb at Angel Mounds is an 11-foot ascent over about 200 meters that gives way to a gentle, rolling descent for much of this split.
3rd Kilometer: The third kilometer is mostly gently rolling with an acute 10-foot climb and descent on the outskirts of the site's largest prehistoric mound and another small climb during the quarter-mile approach to the beginning of the second lap.
4th Kilometer: Same as 1st kilometer
5th Kilometer: Same as 2nd kilometer.
6th Kilometer: Same as 3rd kilometer, with a slight veer off to the right to the finish on the final straightaway.
Players Mentioned
