Michigan
NCAA Indoor Championships
Wolverines Make History on Second Day of NCAA Championships
3/12/2021 5:16:00 PM | Men's Track & Field
Site: Fayetteville, Ark. (Randal Tyson Track Center)
Event: NCAA Indoor Championships (Day 2 of 3)
U-M Result: T-12 of 39 teams (Eight points)
Next U-M Event: Saturday, March 13 -- at NCAA Indoor Championships - Day Three (Fayetteville, Ark.), 2 p.m. CST
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- University of Michigan men's track and field history was written in real time throughout the second day of the NCAA Indoor Championships on Friday (March 12) as the Wolverines affirmed their status as national contenders.
Heptathlete Ayden Owens crushed the school record in a third-place finish and shot putter John Meyer made the most of his NCAA Championships debut in a seventh-place finish -- both in all-time program-best finishes for those events -- to get the Wolverines on the team scoreboard, with miler Tom Dodd posting one of the meet's fastest-ever times in the semifinals to position Michigan for more points on Saturday.
Additionally, Devin Meyrer broke the school record at the 5,000-meter distance for an 11th-place finish in that event and made history as the program's most prolific indoor 5,000-meter runner.
Owens eclipsed Steven Bastien's four-year-old heptathlon standard by 152 points and tied for the No. 25 spot on the all-time collegiate list with a masterful 5,995-point effort over the course of seven events, good enough to net him six team points for the Wolverines. While Owens was in the midst of his heptathlon, Meyer saved his best for last in the shot put final with a big 19.50m (63 feet, 11.75 inches) to earn two more points for Michigan.
Dodd will look to join them as a scorer after clocking a historic 3:57.00 in the mile semifinals, establishing himself as not just one of the fastest milers in school history but one of the fastest in NCAA Championships history.
Michigan now enters the final day with eight total points, which is tied for 12th in the team standings.
Just as he did on day one, Owens set the pace for the entire field in the opening sprint event, this time clocking a season-best-tying 7.87 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles for the top time and a significant 1,015-point haul. Only one other athlete earned a higher single-event point total throughout the entire competition.
Additionally, when paired with his 7.84 from the 2019 NCAA Indoor Championships during his days at Southern California, Owens became just the third man in meet history to run faster than 7.90 in the heptathlon 60-meter hurdles in two different years.
Just surviving the 60-meter hurdles intact was an accomplishment. Two other men, including title contender Leo Neugebauer of Texas, did not finish the race and a third finished in 10 seconds to effectively end their hopes of a top finish.
The extremely technical penultimate pole vault competition similarly has a way of weeding out would-be contenders, but Owens, too, passed this test with flying colors. After entering at a bar well below his best to ensure he put points on the board, he worked his way up to a first-attempt make at a career-best-tying 4.56m (14-11.5) to net himself 778 points.
Fittingly, he closed out the effort with a fourth career-best performance. With only five laps standing between Owens and both national glory and school history, he slashed nearly seven seconds off his personal best to clock 2:40.07. He went out hard early and established himself in the top four.
By the time the bell rang for 200 meters to go, Owens had moved up to second and closed out with the fastest lap of anyone in the field at 30.20 seconds.
His overall seven-event performance to take third in the standings marked the best finish by a U-M competitor in the event, supplanting Bastien's eighth-place finishes from 2015 and 2016.
In the shot put, Meyer posted the highest-ever U-M finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships (11th, Derek Sievers, 2015) and the best, indoors or out, since 1957 (national champion Dave Owen)
Meyer bookended his day with a pair of crucial 19-foot heaves. The redshirt sophomore opened his day with a 19.31m (63-4.25) throw that solidified his chances of advancing to the nine-man final after the first three rounds of throwing. His 18.69m (61-4) second-round throw would not have advanced him to the final.
After entering the final three throws in seventh place, he dropped to eighth in the penultimate fifth round. Having already secured at least eighth place when he stepped into the ring for his final throw, he saved his best for last with a 19.50m (63-11.75) bomb that moved him up one spot in the standings.
Not only was it the third-best throw of his entire career, delivered exactly when it mattered most, it was also the second-farthest throw ever by a seventh-place finisher at the NCAA Indoor Championships -- a testament both to his performance and the depth of the field.
Though he still has to perform in the final on Saturday to join Owens and Meyer as point scorers, Dodd was stunning in his mile semifinal performance. After settling in at the back of the pack early on, he remained at the tail-end of the eight-man field through six of eight laps before starting to make his move with 350 meters left to go.
By the time he came around for one lap left to go, he moved up to sixth -- the absolute lowest he could finish and still have a shot of qualifying for the Saturday final.
With less than 100 meters left to go, Dodd turned up the degree of difficulty and went wide on the final turn and slingshotted around all but heat winner and No. 2 all-time collegian Cole Hocker of Oregon to secure his spot in the final in 3:57.00. When the race ended, Dodd had clocked the race's fastest lap at 28.46 seconds.
So fast was the race that all eight runners finished better than 3:58.50 -- and two of them did not make the final. The heat accounted for four of the fastest times in NCAA Championships history, with Dodd checking in as the No. 8 performer in meet history.
In U-M school history, only Olympians Nate Brannen (3:55.11), Kevin Sullivan (3:55.33) and Nick Willis (3:56.55) have ever run faster.
No one in school history has run faster indoors than Meyrer over the 5,000-meter distance after Friday, as he clocked a speedy 13:40.66 for 11th place in one of the fastest NCAA Championships 5K races ever. Three runners finished faster than 13:30, with 11 going 13:41 or faster.
Like Dodd, Meyrer ran from the back of the pack early as much of the field settled into a hard pace behind breakaway leader and eventual winner Wesley Kiptoo of Iowa State.
At the halfway point, Meyrer started to move up the field, going from 16th to 15th to 14th on successive laps with three-quarters of the field still within two seconds of one another. Meyrer was on the move as he clocked the race's fastest split at 3,400 meters. With 1,000 meters to go, he moved up to 13th and pushed up to 11th with a lap remaining, where he ultimately finished.
Though he did not score team points for the Wolverines, he made history in other ways. In addition to his run being a school record, it was his third sub-14-minute performance of the season -- his third in the past 29 days, in fact. No other man in school history has broken that threshold as many times in a single season as Meyrer now has.
The NCAA Indoor Championships will conclude Saturday (March 13) with Dodd running the mile final at 2 p.m. CST and Tom Brady contesting the 3,000-meter final at 3 p.m. CST.
Full Michigan Results by Event
Q = automatic qualifier to final; q = at-large qualifier to final
Mile
Prelims
2. Tom Dodd / 3:57.00Q [New PR]
5,000 meter run
Final
11. Devin Meyrer / 13:40.66 [U-M Record]
Shot Put
Final
7. John Meyer / 19.50m (63-11.75)
Ayden Owens
Final
3. Ayden Owens / 5,995 points
60 meter dash / 6.82 (947 pts) / Place: 1
Long Jump / 7.36m (24-1.75) (900 pts) [New PR] / Place: 6
Shot Put / 14.07m (46-2) (733 pts) / Place: 7
High Jump / 1.94m (6-4.5) (749 pts) [New PR] / Place: 9
60 meter hurdles / 7.87 (1015 pts) / Place: 1
Pole Vault / 4.56m (14-11.5) (778 pts) [New PR] / Place: 11
1000 meter run / 2:40.07 (874 pts) [New PR] / Place: 2
Players Mentioned
