Michigan
B1G Indiana Invitational #1
Michigan Men to Make Long-Awaited Outdoor Return at Indiana
3/25/2021 11:00:00 AM | Men's Track & Field
THIS WEEK
Fri-Sat., March 26-27 -- at Big Ten Indiana invitational #1 (Bloomington, Ind.)
Meet Information
Friday, March 26 -- at Big Ten Indiana invitational #1, 6:30 p.m.
Live Results
Saturday, March 27 -- at Big Ten Indiana invitational #1, 11 a.m.
Live Results
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ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- For the first time in 658 days, the University of Michigan men's track and field team will take its talents outdoors as it kicks off the 2021 spring season this Friday and Saturday (March 26-27) in the first of four Big Ten Indiana Invitationals in which the Wolverines will compete over the next month and a half.
Michigan's sprinters, jumpers and multi-event athletes will be the first to foray into the elements, marking a long-awaited return to outdoor action after the 2020 campaign was lost to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. They will be squaring off with Big Ten-only competition in host Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan State, Minnesota and Purdue.
Competition at Indiana's Robert C. Haugh Track and Field Complex officially gets underway Friday evening at 6:30 p.m., though the Wolverines are not expected to compete in their only event of the day until around 9 p.m. in the pole vault.
The meet gets rolling in earnest on Saturday morning, with both field events and track events beginning at 11 a.m., before coming to a close at around 4 p.m.
This weekend's invitational is long-awaited not only as an end to the drought of outdoor competition, but also as the beginning of welcoming back into the fold key contributors who only had outdoor eligibility remaining due to the pandemic.
Set to make their returns this week are Ghanaian Olympic hopeful hurdler Roland Amarteifio and All-American relay sprinter Desmond Melson.
They will join 2021 Big Ten Indoor Championships individual scorers Heath Baldwin, Mason Mahacek and Josh Zeller, along with former relay All-American Vail Hartman among the 14-man roster Michigan will field in Bloomington this weekend.
In addition to racing, jumping and throwing for wins in their respective events, the group will also be looking to post marks that will boost them into position to qualify for the NCAA East Preliminaries in May. The threshold for qualification will be tighter than in years past, as the number of qualifiers per event has been decreased from 48 to 32 as a coronavirus precaution.
Fans can follow along with the action by way of live results from Indiana. Updates will also be provided via the team's official social media accounts.
Notes & Outlook
• When last the Wolverines competed outdoors as a full team under the direction of head coaches Jerry Clayton and James Henry, they finished sixth at the 2019 Big Ten Outdoor Championships held at Iowa. Michigan went on to finish tied for 26th at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships in what is its most recent outdoor meet.
• U-M will look much different than its 2019 incarnation, with returning athletes accounting for only 19.5 of the 49.5 points scored in individual events at the 2019 Big Ten meet. Returning scorers from that squad include two-time Big Ten indoor shot put champion Andrew Liskowitz (third in the shot put), double scorer Roland Amarteifio (fourth in the 400m hurdles and eighth in the 110m hurdles), distance runner Devin Meyrer (fourth at 10,000 meters), Job Mayhue (seventh in the 110m hurdles), and Max Wagner (eighth in the high jump).
• Andrew Liskowitz was a first team All-American in the outdoor shot put in 2019, the duo of Desmond Melson and Vail Hartman were part of the second team All-America 4x400 relay, and Roland Amarteifio earned honorable mention as an NCAA Championships qualifier in the 400-meter hurdles.
• Liskowitz in particular will be looking to recapture his form heading into a 2020 NCAA Indoor Championships that fell victim to the pandemic. He entered the meet as the national leader in the event and the No. 19 shot putter in collegiate history, and has this one season remaining to reassert that potential.
• Roland Amarteifio will compete for the first time as the leader of the outdoor hurdles group with the departure of four-time All-American Taylor McLaughlin after the 2019 season. Amarteifio will be chasing the 48.90 Olympic qualifying standard in the 400-meter hurdles as well as trying to make his fifth straight final in either the indoor 60-meter hurdles or outdoor 110-meter hurdles.
• That veteran corps -- all of whom but Devin Meyrer, Job Mayhue and Vail Hartman only had 2021 outdoor eligibility -- will be joined by a wave of new talent that has developed since Michigan's last outdoor competition. Five newly minted indoor All-Americans stand ready to contribute, all but one of whom will be making their outdoor debuts for Michigan in 2021. Meyrer was both a second team All-American at 5,000 meters and a cross country All-American in the span of three days; Ayden Owens was a first team All-American in the heptathlon, as were John Meyer in the shot put and Tom Dodd in the mile; and Tom Brady was a second team All-American at 3,000 meters.
• Devin Meyrer ran a school-record 13:40.66 to finish 11th in the NCAA Indoor Championships 5,000-meter final, and three days later gutted out a 24th-place finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championships over 10 kilometers (6.21 miles). He will look to potentially pull a similar double at Big Ten Outdoors with races at 10,000 meters and 5,000 meters.
• Ayden Owens established himself as one of the best freshmen decathletes in collegiate history in 2019 while at Southern California, and has only grown stronger in the meantime. Nearly two years removed from a 8,130-point decathlon performance that places him No. 26 all-time among collegians, he scored 5,995 points in the 2021 NCAA Indoor Championships heptathlon to take third in the competition and move to No. 25 all-time in that event.
• Tom Dodd made his status as an elite middle-distance runner abundantly clear at the NCAA Indoor Championships, clocking 3:57.00 and 3:58.65 miles on back-to-back days en route to a seventh-place finish. It was his third sub-four mile of the season, a feat no one else in school history had accomplished during the indoor season.
• Andrew Liskowitz will have company in the shot put this spring, as teammate John Meyer posted the best-ever finish for Michigan in the NCAA Indoor Championships shot put in seventh, and the best indoors or outdoors since 1957. As a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic, this will be Meyer's first outdoor season at Michigan, in what is his third academic year in Ann Arbor.
• Tom Brady and John Meyer will be among the leaders of a group of young Wolverines who have made an impact over the past two outdoor seasons but have not yet had an opportunity to show their potential outdoors. Also in that group are two-time Big Ten Indoor 60-meter hurdles finalist Josh Zeller -- whose last outdoor competition was a European U20 title in the 110-meter hurdles in 2019 -- and two-time 2021 Big Ten Indoor Championships scorer Nick Foster, as well as two-time Big Ten Indoor heptathlon scorers Heath Baldwin and Mason Mahacek.
Players Mentioned
