Season Review: 2016-17 Michigan Men's Track and Field
7/18/2017 2:59:00 PM | Men's Track & Field
• Team Captains: Steven Bastien, Grant Cartwright, Ben Flanagan, Taylor McLaughlin
• Big Ten Conference (Indoor): tied-7th Place
• Big Ten Conference (Outdoor): tied-8th Place
• NCAA Championships (Indoor): tied-22nd Place
• NCAA Championships (Outdoor): tied-41st Place
Continuing an upward trend under head coach Jerry Clayton in his fourth year at the helm, the 2017 season was historic in many ways for the University of Michigan men's track and field team. Led by a trio of new school record-holders and first-team All-Americans in Steven Bastien, Grant Cartwright and Joe Ellis, the Wolverines made significant strides in developing the type of all-around balanced program that will contend for Big Ten and NCAA glory. That balance was on display in the postseason as Michigan qualified 16 entries to the outdoor NCAA East Preliminary Round in late May, spanning across 12 different events and all four of the major disciplines (sprints/hurdles, jumps, throws, distance). Five advanced to the NCAA Outdoor Championships and three earned All-America honors, pairing nicely with the four All-America honors from the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Team Highlights
• Led by the dynamic weight throw duo of national runner-up Cartwright and seventh-place Ellis, Michigan scored 10 points to tie for 22nd at the NCAA Indoor Championships for the best result among all Big Ten. The result marked Michigan's best finish and highest point total at NCAA Indoors since 2007, when the Wolverines were sixth with 23.
• Outdoors it was Ellis and Bastien who paced the Wolverines to a tie for 41st place at the NCAA Outdoor Championships. Bastien finished fourth in the decathlon while Ellis was eighth in the hammer throw. They were joined by second-team All-American 400-meter hurdler Taylor McLaughlin and Honorable Mention awardees Cartwright and Andrew Liskowitz in the shot put. Liskowitz was the only freshman shot putter in the competition.
• U-M was also the only Big Ten school to score in every middle-distance and distance race (800, 1,500, 5,000, 10,000 meters and 3,000-meter steeplechase outdoors; and 800, mile, 3,000, 5,000 and distance medley relay) at both the Big Ten Indoor and Outdoor Championships.
• Led by hammer throw champion Ellis and three-time scorer Cartwright, only one other school had more top-eight scoring performances in the throwing events at the Big Ten Championships than Michigan's five.
• During the regular season, Michigan emerged victorious at the Battle of the Blues over North Carolina and host Duke, outscoring the ACC duo's combined total. The Wolverines posted 101 points, compared to 54 for Duke and 45 for North Carolina, as they claimed wins in eight of the 19 events.
Individual Highlights
• Cartwright erupted onto the national scene as the NCAA indoor runner-up, Big Ten champion and school record-holder in the weight throw. Entering the season with a career-best of only 20.01m (65-7.75), the redshirt junior added more than three meters to that mark at the Big Ten Championships with his school-record 23.31m (76-5.75), making him the No. 10 American man in collegiate history. He went on to throw 22.70m (74-5.75) to take second at NCAAs. Outdoors, he was a three-time scorer at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships and an NCAA Championships qualifier in the shot put.
• Teammate Ellis joined with Cartwright for one of the best 1-2 punches in the nation for the throwing events. Ellis had raised the weight throw school record to 22.15m (72-8) in the opening rounds of the Big Ten Championships before Cartwright's breakthrough performance, and went on to finish seventh at the NCAA Indoor Championships in the event. Outdoors he twice broke his own school record in the hammer throw, including a 70.98m (232-10) mark to win Michigan's first Big Ten title in the event since 1930. He finished eighth in the most competitive NCAA Championships hammer competition in history, earning Michigan's first top-eight finish in the event since 1933.
• Multi-eventer Bastien closed out his historic Michigan career in the most fitting manner possible: more history. After winning the Big Ten title in the decathlon in a dramatic, come-from-behind effort in the final event, Bastien stepped up his game with a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Outdoor Championships at 8.015 points, becoming just the 56th man in college history to top the 8,000-point barrier. Indoors, he also bettered his own heptathlon school record with 5,843 points at the Akron Invitational.
• Headlining the action on the track for the Wolverines this year was the historic sub-four-minute mile trio of Ned Willig, Will Sheeran and Connor Mora. All three men broke the magical four-minute barrier at the indoor Boston U John Thomas Terrier Classic in late January, with Willig crossing the line in 3:58.09, Sheeran in 3:59.15 and Mora in 3:59.36. It marked the first time in Michigan history that three Wolverines went sub-four in the same race.
Honors and Awards
Steven
Bastien
Grant
Cartwright
Joe
Ellis
Taylor
McLaughlin
Ned
Willig
Jerry
Clayton
All-Americans
Steven Bastien (first team outdoors, second team indoors)
Joe Ellis (first team indoors and outdoors)
Grant Cartwright (first team indoors)
Taylor McLaughlin (second team outdoors)
Ned Willig (second team indoors)
Big Ten Conference
All-Big Ten (First Team): Grant Cartwright, Joe Ellis, Steven Bastien
All-Big Ten (Second Team): Joe Ellis
Sportsmanship Award: Khoury Crenshaw (indoor), Ned Willig (outdoor)
NCAA Great Lakes Region
Indoor Field Athlete of the Year: Grant Cartwright
Big Ten Athlete of the Week
Steven Bastien (Feb. 8)
Ned Willig (Feb. 1)
Joe Ellis (Jan. 25)
CoSIDA Academic All-District
Aaron Baumgarten, Sr., Aerospace Engineering
Will Sheeran, Gr., Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology
Big Ten Distinguished Scholar
Billy Bund, Sr., Economics
Kevin Haughn, Jr., Aerospace Engineering
Connor Mora, Sr., Sport Management
Brennan Munley, Jr., Biomolecular Science
Will Sheeran, Gr., Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology (MS)
Ned Willig, Gr., Environmental Informatics (MS)
Academic All-Big Ten (16)
Chase Barnett, Jr., Sport Management
Steven Bastien, Sr., Sociology
Aaron Baumgarten, Sr., Aerospace Engineering
Micah Beller, Sr., Information
Billy Bund, Sr., Economics
Stephen Burk, Sr., International Studies
Ben Flanagan, Sr., Movement Science
Kevin Hall, So., Economics
Kevin Haughn, Jr., Aerospace Engineering
Ben Hill, So., Undeclared
Taylor McLaughlin, So., Mechanical Engineering
Connor Mora, Sr., Sport Management
Brennan Munley, Jr., Biomolecular Science
Will Sheeran, Gr., Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology
Blake Washington, So., Cognitive Science
Ryan Wilkie, Jr., Engineering
Players Mentioned
