Wolverines to Field Full Squad at B1G North Florida Invite

Friday, April 2

Jacksonville, Fla.

Noon

Michigan

B1G North Florida Invitational

Max Wagner (Michigan Photography)

Wolverines to Field Full Squad at B1G North Florida Invite

3/31/2021 10:12:00 AM | Men's Track & Field

By: Kyle Terwillegar

THIS WEEK
Fri-Sat., April 2-3 -- at B1G North Florida Invitational (Jacksonville, Fla.)
Meet Information

Friday, April 2 -- at B1G North Florida Invitational, 1 p.m.
Live Results
Saturday, April 3 -- at B1G North Florida Invitational, 9 a.m.
Live Results
• When to Watch the Wolverines (PDF)

• Social Media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- For the first time since May 2019, the University of Michigan men's track and field team will roll out a lineup with all the event groups -- sprints, distance, jumps and throws -- represented as it heads to Jacksonville, Fla., for a rare early-season full-conference showdown at the B1G North Florida Invitational on Friday and Saturday (April 2-3).

Every team in the Big Ten will compete in the two-day neutral-site competition at North Florida's Hodges Stadium, hosted by Iowa, as part of the conference-only schedule adopted by the Big Ten for the 2021 season, providing an unusual opportunity for a championship preview.

Friday (April 2) is shaping up to be the busier of two days for the Wolverines, with field events -- which are spread evenly over the two days -- beginning at 1 p.m. and a track program centered on top-seeded individual events split into an early session starting at 2:40 p.m. and a later session kicking off for Michigan at 7:45 p.m.

The remainder of the field events resume Saturday (April 3) starting at 9 a.m., with a track session that includes three relay races and non-seeded sections of individual events starting at 3:15 p.m. for the Wolverines.

Nearly all of the Wolverines' top contenders will suit up for the trip to Jacksonville, including for the first time in 2021 returners Andrew Liskowitz -- a multiple-time Big Ten champion and All-American -- in the throws and Max Wagner in the high jump. They join sprinters Roland Amarteifio and Desmond Melson as seniors from a year ago who returned to take advantage of an extra season of eligibility granted after the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic wiped away the 2020 outdoor season.

Set to make their Michigan outdoor debuts are a trio of first team All-Americans from this month's NCAA Indoor Championships in decathlete Ayden Owens, distance runner Tom Dodd and thrower John Meyer. Owens was third in the indoor heptathlon at indoor nationals, while Dodd and Meyer were seventh in the mile and shot put, respectively. This will be Meyer's first outdoor competition for Michigan in his three years at Michigan, missing the previous two seasons due to injury and COVID-19 cancellation.

Dodd also will lead the Michigan distance crew in its first outdoor action of 2021, along with multiple-time Big Ten scorer Anthony Berry and Big Ten Indoor Championships double-scorer Nick Foster in his U-M outdoor debut, among others.

They all will look to build on the solid start in last week's season-opener at Indiana, led by event winners Amarteifio in the 400-meter hurdles and newcomer Bera Ajala in the triple jump.

For a full schedule of which Wolverines will compete in which events, and when, please refer to the notes document linked at the top of the release.

Though the aim of having the meet in Florida was to provide ideal weather conditions to chase fast times and big marks to position student-athletes for qualification to the NCAA East Preliminaries to be held at this same facility in the end of May, the weather is forecast to be sunny but unseasonably cool.

Friday is projected to reach a high of 57 degrees -- nearly 20 degrees chillier than the historical average and only nine degrees warmer than Ann Arbor's projected high for the same day -- with Saturday expected to warm up to 65 degrees compared to Ann Arbor's 60.

Fans can follow along with the action by way of live results from AdkinsTrak Timing. Updates also will be provided via the team's official social media accounts.

Notes and 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.

• The team 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).

• 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 Amarteifio earned honorable mention as an NCAA Championships qualifier in the 400-meter hurdles.

• Andrew Liskowitz in particular will be looking to recapture his form heading into a 2020 NCAA Indoor Championships that ultimately fall 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. He opened his season last weekend with a 52.31 effort in the 400 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.

• 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 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.

Up Next

Fri-Sat., April 9-10 -- at B1G Indiana Invitational #2 (Bloomington, Ind.), TBA