The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/213966
NCAA Great Lakes Regional: men's cross country from where we were at the beginning, my freshman year. "I didn't know if it's where we would end up, but to come away with a win is really exciting." Indiana State's John Mascari won the 10,000-meter race (30:05), but the Wolverines executed a brilliant race plan. Along with Beams, junior Mason Ferlic (third, with a time of 30:11) and Rayyan (10th, with a time of 30:38) helped Michigan bring home the crown. The Wolverines were without freshman Ben Flanagan, an All-Big Ten honoree, and sophomore Tony Smorgiewicz. Both runners are reliable finishers, but Gibby chose to sit them, so they could focus on the NCAA Championships, set to take place Nov. 23. And in their place, freshmen Cory Flines and Connor Mora stepped up. Glines finished 26th overall (31:07), and Mora was right behind him in 31st (31:22). The Wolverines placed two more in the top 40 of the race, with redshirt sophomore August Pappas taking 23rd (30:57) and redshirt freshman Nick Renberg taking 39th (31:27). "We were young in the back end, and those guys ran well," Gibby said. "We had two true freshmen who were [26th and 31st overall], Cory and Connor, and they ran really well, but we would not have won if the table wasn't set by our top three guys. They have been in that situation before. They have run successfully for a couple years for us now, and they simply executed to their capabilities. "We ran to win at the Big Tens. Indiana ran a terrific race to beat us. The tactics of the Big Ten as well as the 8,000-meter distance probably favored Indiana over us. But we ran well, despite conditions and race length. We knew shifting to 10,000 meters would benefit us. We were confident in our ability to execute after our plan at regionals." After three years of steady improvement with no titles to show for it, and this year's close loss to the Hoosiers at the Big Ten meet, a regional title is huge for the program. "At a certain point, you want to stop talking about moral victories," Gibby said. "We ran well at the Big Tens. It's possible that we may have run better at Big Tens than we did at the NCAA regionals, but we ended up second place there. To go into an NCAA regional against four ranked teams and run like we did, even with some guys held out, was nice. And it's a tangible reward for our two senior captains, Mark and Morsi." When Gibby first came to Ann Arbor, he preached development and recruiting — both of which take a large investment of time. And Gibby is starting to see the dividends. "We have gotten to the point, through development and recruiting, where we're no longer covering the basic day-to-day operations," Gibby said. "Those are sort of ingrained in our program: how we train, why we train, how we re-