Scholar Stories: In Academics and Athletics, Meyrer Thrives at Michigan
10/30/2019 12:41:00 PM | Men's Cross Country, Features
Continuing the series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Prairie Farms.
By Ethan Tipping
The greatest piece of advice Devin Meyrer ever received was to do what makes you happy. It's precisely that advice that led him to the University of Michigan.
A redshirt junior, Meyrer is one of two captains on the men's cross country team. To get to where he is today, Meyrer took a unique route over the course of five years which included numerable setbacks due to injuries. In order to make the improvements he wanted, Meyrer had to demonstrate perseverance and determination.
He began his collegiate career at Baylor, which was a big deal considering he was, in his own words "more of a slow developer." He did not start seeing college-level results until his senior year of high school, far into the recruiting cycle.
As soon as Meyrer became a Baylor Bear, he formulated a plan for himself. At the beginning, it could not have gone smoother.
After his freshman cross country season, Meyrer took a redshirt for the indoor track season to focus on academics and training for the outdoor season.
But even the best laid plans go awry. As the outdoor season approached, Meyrer came down with a stress reaction in his heel, an injury that tested his willpower. He missed four weeks, which put him behind his teammates in training.
When he returned after weeks of rehab and cross-training, he ran in two races unattached. Despite being a self-proclaimed slow developer and enduring multiple injuries, Meyrer was still morphing into an elite runner.
At the beginning of his sophomore year, he started thinking bigger. He wanted a greater challenge both academically and athletically. That's when he started to think about transferring.
One place that checked both of those boxes was Michigan.
"I loved many parts of Baylor, but I realized a bigger program was more to my fitting," Meyrer said. "Michigan has a very strong academic standing and is consistently among the best teams in the country. It was the place I wanted to be. I wanted to look back on my college years and know that I put everything into running that I could. For me, Michigan allowed me to do just that."
With this in mind, he set out to represent the Wolverines and, with it, begin a new chapter in his life story. But as he was preparing to make his Maize and Blue debut, he suffered an Achilles injury that kept him from running for four months. Despite yet another setback, Meyrer was able to recover from his injury fully.
Once he returned to action, Meyrer ran career bests in the 10,000-meter run (29:17.48 at the Stanford Invitational) and in the 5,000-meter run (14:00.91 at the Cardinal Classic). Meyrer finished fourth in the 10,000-meter run at the Big Ten Championships last May, scoring five points for the team.
Despite his injury history, Meyrer has been able to create victorious moments in his collegiate career. When asked about his mindset while he runs, Meyrer claims he does not worry about times -- only places.
"If I'm off my split by a little bit, it might mess with my head while I'm running," he said, "but if I'm focusing solely on competing and trying to beat people, the times will naturally come."
Meyrer was born in Bremen, Germany, but moved to the United States when he was 10 months old and has dual citizenship.
Because of that, Meyrer was able to find his way back to Germany this past summer when he represented the country at the U-23 European Championships in Sweden. He placed 20th in the 5,000-meter run.
"It was unbelievable to represent the country of Germany and compete with the best runners in Europe," he said. "It was an amazing experience I will never forget."
One particular challenge he faced was the language barrier. Meyrer spoke a little German but only really knew the basics. It was far from sufficient to communicate with his teammates. Instead, he leaned heavily a teammate, Aaron Bienenfeld, a runner at the University of Cincinnati who served as his de facto translator.
"[German] was one of the first classes I took when I got to the college.Finally, my grandparents and my cousins started to love me again because I could speak a little bit of German," he joked.
When Meyrer transferred from Baylor to Michigan, he also switched majors from psychology to biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience (BCN). As Meyrer explained, it is a mix of social psychology and real, hard-science psychology.
In addition to the major being a solid middle-ground for his academic interests, it provides a wide variety of courses to engage in and learn about, from the communication of fish or the neuroscience behind addiction.
As Meyrer forges on with his senior year, he is continuing to look ahead. He intends to earn his master's at the Ross School of Business, a path that would pair perfectly with his plans to take a fifth year.
As for his career aspirations, Meyrer hopes to stay close to Ann Arbor. He has plans to open his own private practice in counseling, whether that be family counseling or addiction counseling.
Being at Michigan has provided Meyrer with the ability to improve not only as a runner but also in transforming himself as person.
"Being at Michigan has been the best decision of my life. Despite injury, complications with transferring and other challenges that I've faced, I would never trade the experiences I've had at Michigan for anything," he said. "In my year and a half, I have been welcomed wholly and challenged in ways I could have never imagined. What makes college so meaningful to me is when you can go through it and come out the other side a completely different human. That's when you know something went right for you. For that, I will always be in debt to Michigan."
Players Mentioned
