Michigan
Big Ten Outdoor Championships
Competitive Big Ten Championships Await Wolverine Women
5/11/2022 5:15:00 PM | Women's Track & Field
THIS WEEK
Fri-Sun., May 13-15 -- at Big Ten Outdoor Championships (Minneapolis, Minn.) | Championships Central
Friday, May 13 -- at Big Ten Outdoor Championships, Noon CDT
TV: B1G+ | Live Results | Live Video: Track / Field
Saturday, May 14 -- at Big Ten Outdoor Championships, 10 a.m. CDT
TV: B1G+ | Live Results | Live Video: Track / Field
Sunday, May 15 -- at Big Ten Outdoor Championships, 11 a.m. CDT
TV: B1G+ | Live Results | Live Video: Track / Field
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ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Spearheaded by a trio of former conference champions and a promising cadre of title contenders, the University of Michigan women's track and field team is set for a hotly contested Big Ten Outdoor Championships this Friday through Sunday (May 13-15) at the University of Minnesota Track and Field Stadium in Minneapolis, Minn.
Early projections for the three-day competition at the University of Minnesota Track and Field Stadium have the Wolverines in a wide-open fray behind pre-meet favorite Ohio State.
Michigan has finished top-five at the outdoor championships in all but one season since 2013, not counting the 2020 edition that was lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is coming off a fifth-place finish a year ago, and most recently won a share of the title in 2016.
The last time the championships were contested in Minneapolis was 2003, when the Wolverines emerged victorious 137-124-124 over Indiana and Penn State.
This year, reigning individual champions Ziyah Holman (400 meters) and Aurora Rynda (800 meters) will look to repeat, while former indoor champion Jessica Mercier (pole vault) will look to round back into vintage form.
More Wolverines are in position to go for their first titles or medals.
Big Ten Indoor silver medalist Aasia Laurencin is among the favorites in the 100-meter hurdles; Kayla Windemuller will challenge for the 3,000-meter steeplechase title in her first full season focusing on the event; Riley Ammenhauser (triple jump) and indoor silver medalist Ameia Wilson (long jump) are among the conference's best horizontal jumpers; co-school record-holder Brooke Tjerrild and Mia Manson will join with Jessica Mercier in the pole vault to form one of the conference's deepest corps; and newly minted school-record-holder Corinne Jemison and Amanda Schaare will battle for big points in the highly competitive throws events.
Multiple-time Big Ten scorer Theresa Mayanja and Clare McNamara kick off the weekend for the Wolverines with the start of the heptathlon at 12:45 p.m. CDT on Friday (May 13). The first four events in the two-day combined-event competition are expected to conclude by just after 4:30 p.m.
Jessica Mercier, Brooke Tjerrild, Mia Manson and Cate Visscher will go for big points in the pole vault, Michigan's first field event final of the weekend and its only one on Friday, at 5 p.m. CDT.
Action on the track begins at 5:35 p.m. CDT. Michigan will attempt to advance individuals in the 400-meter hurdles (5:55 p.m.), 200 meters (6:15 p.m.) and 1,500 meters (6:45 p.m.) through to Sunday's finals.
Saturday (May 14) starts with the final three events of the heptathlon, which is expected to conclude at approximately 2:30 p.m. CDT. Field event action for the Wolverines on day two include the long jump (1:20 p.m.) and the discus (4:30 p.m.).
The remaining qualifying rounds on the track begin at 4 p.m. CDT with the 400 meters, and continue with the 100 meters (4:30 p.m.), the 100-meter hurdles (5 p.m.) and the 800 (5:30 p.m.). The session wraps up with the final of the 3,000-meter steeplechase at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday's (May 15) schedule is finals across the board, beginning at 11 a.m. CDT with the triple jump and noon with the shot put.
The track program is set to begin at 12:45 p.m. CDT with the 4x100 relay, and continues with finals from the previous two days of qualifying. The last two events are standalone finals with the 5,000 meters at 2:49 p.m. and the meet-finale 4x400 relay at 3:33 p.m.
All three days of competition will be streamed online on the subscription B1G+ platform, with two separate feeds each day for track events and composite coverage of field events.
Live results will be provided through Primetime Timing. Updates will be posted to the official Michigan track and field social media channels throughout the day.
How the Big Ten Outdoor Championships Work
Each of the teams in the conference has the opportunity to enter student-athletes into the 21 events on the Big Ten Indoor Championships meet program. Student-athletes will compete against each other in each of those events, with points awarded to the respective teams of the top-eight finishers.
Event winners will get 10 points for their teams, with the runners-up receiving eight points in the 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 scoring. The team that accumulates the most points from its student-athletes will be crowned the team champion.
Featured Wolverines
• Ziyah Holman is undefeated in Big Ten finals at the 400-meter distance, having swept the titles during her debut 2021 season and already claimed the 2022 indoor crown. Only three women in conference history have accomplished what Holman is attempting to achieve in winning a fourth-straight 400-meter title. Adriane Diamond of Indiana won five in a row between indoors and outdoors during a span of three seasons from 1985 through 1987, and both Janis Foster of Ohio State (1991-1993) and Ashley Spencer of Illinois (2012-13) won four straight.
• A 2021 outdoor second-team All-American and a 2022 first-team All-American, Aurora Rynda is not only battling for a defense of her Big Ten 800-meter title from last spring, but also a spot in the 2022 NCAA postseason. With a best of 2:06.93 this spring, she is likely on the outside looking in at the top-48 that will advance to the NCAA East Preliminaries later this month. A performance in the neighborhood of 2:05 would likely secure her a spot, but she will be going for much faster as she looks to defend her title and win a title for Michigan in this event for the fourth time in what would be the last six editions of the meet.
• Jessica Mercier has struggled, relatively speaking, since a school record 4.36m (14 feet, 3.5 inches) clearance during the indoor season, no-heighting at both the Big Ten Indoor Championships and the NCAA Indoor Championships. She is on an upward trajectory after 4.09m (13-5) and 4.02m (13-2.25) efforts in her last two outings, and has a history of performing well at the conference meet. Outside of her no-height this winter, she was the 2021 indoor champion, the silver medalist outdoors in both 2019 and 2021 and a fourth-place finisher indoors in 2019.
• Mercier will be joined by a pole vault crew composed of three women who have broken or shared a record during their time at Michigan. Mercier owns the indoor record and a share of the outdoor record at 4.25m (13 feet, 11.25 inches) with not only Brooke Tjerrild but also volunteer assistant Kiley (Tobel) Bastien, and Manson briefly held a share of the school record indoors at 4.26m (13-11.75) before Mercier eclipsed it moments later.
• Aasia Laurencin is arguably the hottest hurdler in the conference heading into the championships, having run a wind-legal Michigan career-best 13.30 seconds to decisively win the Drake Relays over a trio of national top-25 women, including the reigning conference champ -- despite contending with nearly 20 mph wind conditions. A potential title would be the seventh in Michigan history in the event, and the first by a woman without the surname "Ofili": sisters Tiffany (2006-07, 2008) and Cindy (2014-16) combined to win six during their careers.
• Kayla Windemuller made the most of her first-ever steeplechase at the 2021 Big Ten meet, running 10:11.78 for sixth and qualifying for the NCAA East Prelims. Later in the summer, she ran 9:55. Now in her first full season focusing on the event, she opened up at 10:02.46 nearly a month and a half ago and has since lowered her 1,500-meter career best three times to 4:22.78 this past weekend and clocked a career-best 16:01.59 for 5,000 meters. Only one woman in the conference has run faster this season. She would be Michigan's third steeplechase champion.
• Riley Ammenhauser may be ranked only seventh in the conference entering the weekend, but her biggest strength may be her consistency. Throughout the entire indoor season and up until the current outdoor season, her shortest wind-legal "best mark" in any given competition is 12.46m -- the second-longest in the conference -- and she has leapt 12.70m multiple times per competition multiple times. She would join Casey Taylor, whose U-M first-year record she has surpassed both indoors and outdoors, as the only conference champion in the event if she were to win.
• Ameia Wilson opened her outdoor campaign with a bang with a 6.43m (21 feet, 1.25 inches), and has been relatively consistently beyond six meters, often multiple times per competition. She demonstrated poise under pressure at Big Ten Indoors when she leapt past six meters four times and missed out on the title by just eight centimeters. Not since 2009, when Tiffany Ofili took the title, has a Wolverine won the long jump and only three other times before that.
• Corinne Jemison is coming off the best-ever shot put series in school history, indoors or outdoors, with her 16.92m (55 feet, 6.25 inches) school-record winner this past Saturday (May 7), having also broken the outdoor record on her penultimate throw at 16.54m (54-3.25). Still, the mark only moved her up to No. 7 in a hyper-competitive Big Ten -- despite a national No. 27 rank. She also is ranked No. 6 in the discus, and No. 40 nationally. She and teammate Amanda Schaare, who is the No. 3 shot putter in school history and also top-10 in the discus with Jemison, will look to be on top of their games and break through for points.
Up Next
Wed-Sat., May 25-28 -- at NCAA East Preliminaries (Bloomington, Ind.), TBA
Players Mentioned
