Four Seniors Set to Battle for All-America Honors at NCAA Indoor Championships

» Four seniors who have Big Ten titles to their names will represent the Wolverines at the NCAA Indoor Championships in College Station, Texas, this Friday and Saturday.
» Pentathlete Aaron Howell and high jumper Claire Kieffer-Wright will compete for All-America honors (top-eight is first team, 9th-16th is second team) on Friday.
» Gina Sereno and Haley Meier will represent the Wolverines on the track in the 3,000-meter and mile events, respectively. Sereno runs on Saturday and Meier will run prelims on Friday in hopes of qualifying to Saturday's final.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Four seniors from the University of Michigan women's track and field team will test their mettle against the nation's best one last time in their indoor careers when they compete at the NCAA Indoor Championships on Friday and Saturday (March 9-10) at Gilliam Indoor Stadium in College Station, Texas.

Aaron Howell, Claire Kieffer-Wright, Haley Meier and Gina Sereno -- all Big Ten champions at least once in their careers -- will represent the Wolverines at the two-day national championships in the pentathlon, high jump, mile and 3,000 meters, respectively.

Howell is up first for the Wolverines, and will take the track for the first of five events in the pentathlon (60-meter hurdles) at 12:15 p.m. CT. The pentathlon is expected to conclude at 5:30 p.m. CT with the 800-meter finale.

Meier will be next and will toe the line at 5:50 p.m. CT for the preliminary round of the mile, with a berth to Saturday's 4:20 p.m. CT final on the line. Kieffer-Wright wraps up the first day in the high jump at 6 p.m. CT.

In addition to the potential for Meier in Saturday's final, Sereno will conclude the Wolverines' weekend at 6:25 p.m. CT in the 3,000-meter final.

Michigan finished tied for 14th in last year's NCAA Indoor Championships.

ESPN3 will broadcast the NCAA Indoor Championships live, with the stream focusing primarily on the track events with intermittent field event updates.

Fans can follow live results by way of NCAA.com, and the official social media channels of Michigan track and field.

WHEN TO WATCH THE WOLVERINES

Wolverines at the NCAA Indoor Championships
Name	Event	Round	Day / Time
Aaron Howell	60m Hurdles	Pentathlon	March 9 / 12:15 PM
	High Jump	Pentathlon	March 9 / 1 PM
	Shot Put	Pentathlon	March 9 / 3 PM
	Long Jump	Pentathlon	March 9 / 4 PM
	800 Meters	Pentathlon	March 9 / 5:30 PM
Haley Meier	Mile	Prelims	March 9 / 5:50 PM
Claire Kieffer-Wright	High Jump	Final	March 9/ 6 PM
Haley Meier	Mile	Final*	March 10 / 4:20 PM
Gina Sereno	3,000 Meters	Final	March 10 / 6:25 PM

Aaron Howell

• Nearly four years and multiple injuries later, Howell is finally makes a return trip to the NCAA Championships. She earned first-team All-America honors in the outdoor heptathlon as a freshman in 2014 and has faced an uphill struggle for much of the time since. Her last two seasons have led to this moment, with a Big Ten heptathlon title last spring and a career-best 4,133 points to take bronze in the Big Ten Indoor pentathlon two weekends ago.

• Entering the weekend seeded 13th in the nation, her 4,133 points from Big Tens puts her within 100-point striking distance of the next seven women ahead of her on the descending-order list. Another career-best performance from her could put her in the running for a top-eight finish and first-team All-America honors. Not since Bettie Wade took fifth in 2009 -- the fourth consecutive year of All-America honors in the event for Michigan -- has a Wolverine woman earned the award.

• In addition to the lifetime best in the pentathlon, Howell has already logged career-best performances in the shot put and 800 meters, and is knocking on the door of personal records in the 60-meter hurdles and the high jump.

Claire Kieffer-Wright

• Coming off the best regular season of her career and back-to-back Big Ten titles in the most recent outdoor and indoor seasons, Kieffer-Wright will be making her NCAA Championships debut. The dual-sport volleyball star cleared a career-best 1.84m (6 feet, 0.5 inches) in mid-February and made it over 1.81m (5-11.75) to notch a tiebreak win at the Big Ten Indoor Championships.

• Not since Nicole Forrester was third at the 1999 NCAA Indoor Championships has a Wolverine woman earned a top-eight finish at the national meet. Only three Michigan women (Joanna Bullard, 1982, '83; Monika Black, 1995; and Forrester, 1998, '99) have been top-eight at NCAAs in the high jump.

Haley Meier

• Meier may be making her NCAA Championships debut for Michigan, but she has competed at the highest level before as a member of Duke's 10th-place distance medley relay team in 2014. She enters as a strong contender for first-team All-America honors, seeded eighth in the field with her career-best 4:35.69 mile from mid-February and comes off winning her first Big Ten title. She dethroned reigning conference champ Madeline Strandemo of Minnesota to claim the title.

• Though Shannon Osika earned a pair of Second Team All-America honors in 2012 and 2013 with ninth- and 14th-place finishes, respectively, it has been a decade since Michigan wrapped up a streak of five consecutive years with top-eight finishes. Nicole Edwards was the national runner-up in 2008 to cap a streak of three years in a row, with Lindsey Gallo third in 2005 for back-to-back top-eight finishes.

Gina Sereno

• The most decorated woman in the Michigan delegation with a relay first-team All-America honor, three second-team honors and two cross country All-America awards, Sereno will be going for her first individual first-team All-America award this weekend at 3,000 meters. During the regular season, Sereno chopped more than five seconds offer her career best to run 9:01.62 at Washington, putting her 10th entering the NCAAs and is right on the bubble for the top-eight finish needed for first-team All-America.

• Sereno has a chip on her shoulder after taking fifth in the Big Ten final at this distance two weekends ago, though she came back to take third at 5,000 meters.

• With a top-eight finish, Sereno could join a long line of Wolverines who have been All-Americans or first-team All-Americans in the event. Dating back to Sue Schroeder in 1986, nine different women have earned a combined 10 top-eight finishes at 3,000 meters wearing the Maize and Blue.