The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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big ten championships: women's track Wolverines Take Fourth At Conference Meet James Henry took over as the Michigan women's track and field coach in 1985, and in the last 29 seasons in Ann Arbor he has seen some mighty highs and, unfortunately, some lows. The Wolverines won their first-ever Big Ten championship, in 1993, under his leadership. And from 2002-09, the team never finished lower than third in the conference, including four titles (2002‑04, 2007). The bottom dropped out after the 2009 season (marked by a 10th-place showing at the 2011 conference championships, the program's lowest finish ever), and Henry has been carefully building the program back up since. This season, the Wolverines led the pack late on the third and final day of competition (May 10‑12) before falling to fourth place at the end. But the finish marks a significant im- Fifth-year senior Amanda Eccleston provement from last year's seventh- earned first-team All-Big Ten honors place performance, and there are plenty after capturing the league title in the of things that left Henry encouraged 1,500-meter run. photo courtesy michigan about the future. Michigan finished with athletic media relations 82 total points in the championship meet, just four behind third-place Ohio State (86). Penn State won the event with 133 total points, finishing 13 points ahead of second-place Illinois (120). The Wolverines scored 15 more points at the 2013 Big Ten Championships than at last season's. "I was pleased," Henry said. "Our goal was to be in the top three, and we always strive to be conference champions. That slipped away from us in the end. We just didn't have as much depth as some of the other programs. "That is what we're going to work on. We need to be a more balanced team. We just ran out of gas at the end." On the last day of the meet, the Wolverines moved atop the leaderboard after a dominant performance in the 1,500-meter run. Fifth-year senior Amanda Eccleston won the Big Ten title in the race with a time of 4:20.75, and the Wolverines placed three other runners in the top five: senior Rebecca Addison (third place, 4:21.55), redshirt freshman Shannon Osika