Michigan State fifth-year senior Leah O'Connor will go for her fourth Big Ten steeplechase title this weekend

By Colin Riley for FloTrack

“I’m not on my own case about hitting fast times or super huge marks. I’m more or less out here to do the grind and get as many points as possible for my team.”

That’s the plan for this weekend for multiple Big Ten and NCAA champion Leah O’Connor, who shared these words in an interview with msuspartans.com. O’Connor is teamwork personified, a fifth-year senior who is entered in the 1500m, 3000m Steeplechase, and 5000m and has the potential to bring home 30 team points for the Spartans. However, for a returning national champion or a first-time competitor at Big Tens, the goal remains the same: get as many points as possible for your team.

For the first time since 2006, the Big Ten Outdoor Track & Field Championships will return to East Lansing, Michigan. This weekend, thirteen teams will compete at Michigan State University; for conference newcomers Rutgers and Maryland, this will be their first Big Ten Outdoors. Events begin on Friday May 15 with multi-events, Hammer Throw, Women’s Pole Vault, and the 10,000m, with events continuing on Saturday May 16 and concluding on Sunday May 17. Michigan State just had the track at Ralph Young Field resurfaced in anticipation of hosting and it should yield fast times. Here are the six events that we anticipate will be the most riveting:

Men’s Hammer Throw (Friday May 15, 1:30pm)
While most of the focus this weekend will be centered on the track, some of the NCAA’s finest field athletes will go throw for throw across the street at Munn Field. Wisconsin’s Michael Lihrman is ranked #2 nationally in the Hammer Throw and is the top returner from 2014 NCAA Outdoors (Oklahoma State’s Nick Miller has not competed outdoors for the Cowboys this year). His throw of 75.29m (247’) from last week is not only a personal best, but is less than two feet shy of the best NCAA mark this year. Purdue’s Chukwuebuka Enekwechi (#6) beat Lihrman in this event at last year’s Big Tens, but finished 3rd behind Lihrman in the Weight Throw at NCAA Indoors this winter. Not to be overlooked are Minnesota’s Gian Ferretti and Illinois’s Davis Fraker, who are ranked 9th and 10th in the NCAA respectively. The Wisconsin senior should have no trouble taking the gold medal, with Enekwechi finishing runner-up and Ferretti and Fraker battling for bronze.

Men’s 3000m Steeplechase (Saturday May 16, 6:45pm)
Michigan’s Mason Ferlic finished 4th in the Big Ten Steeplechase in 2013, 3rd in 2014, and he will win in 2015. After finishing 4th at 2014 NCAA Outdoors as the top American, the Wolverine junior went on a tear, finishing 13th at NCAA XC, 3rd in the Big Ten Indoor 3K, and winning the Big Ten Indoor 5K title. Those credentials, combined with his recent 8:36 PB and his #4 ranking in the NCAA this year, solidify him as the clear favorite. #14 Jackson Neff from Ohio State stole Ferlic’s thunder in West Lafayette last year, but has only run 8:45 this year. Michigan boasts two more scoring opportunities in freshman Connor Mora and Austin Benoit...is UofM Steeplechase U?

Women’s 1500m (Sunday May 17, 1:05pm)
Picture this: the average track fan from the state of Michigan is perusing the meet entries and takes a look at the Women’s 1500m. ***Spits out Gatorade, screams “Forget Grant Fisher!” and jumps for joy*** Seven of the top ten entries are either from Michigan or Michigan State, and many of them were high-school standouts from the Great Lakes State, including O’Connor, Shannon Osika, Rachele Schulist, Brook Handler, Laura Addison, and Sara Kroll. This race has a lot of storylines. #11 Osika (4:14) and #25 Handler (4:17) are seasoned miler/1500 types who have won Big Ten titles in the Indoor DMR, but never individually. Addison is fresh off a win in her heat at Payton Jordan (4:19). It will be interesting to see Spartan 5K runners Schulist (#20) and Kroll drop down in distance, assuming they start. All of these women will be up against O’Connor, the second fastest indoor miler in NCAA history and owner of the #1 mark in the country (4:11).

Women’s High Jump (Sunday May 17, 2:30pm)
Some events have distinct favorites, but the Women’s High Jump could go any way: four jumpers have all leapt within an inch of each other this season: Nebraska’s Marusa Cernjul, Maryland’s Thea LaFond and Amber Melville, and Illinois’s Kandie Bloch-Jones all rank in the top 15 in the NCAA with their jumps of between 1.84 and 1.86m (6’ 0.5” and 6’1.25”). Cernjul leads the other three by half an inch, but Melville was the Big Ten Indoor Champ and finished 7th at NCAA Outdoor last year, while Bloch-Jones was the runner-up at Big Ten outdoors last year. Can the two Terrapins crash this Big Ten Outdoor party and pull off a 1-2 finish for newcomer Maryland?

Women’s 5000m (Sunday May 17, 2:49pm)
I was hesitant to highlight two events so close in distance and with the same headliners…but I couldn’t resist. Schulist. O’Connor. Erin Finn. 14 combined Big Ten individual titles have been won by these three women, and it is undeniable that someone in this trio will notch another title in the 5K on Sunday afternoon. Finn will run the 10,000m on Friday night, which she won in a meet record last year as a freshman. Her 15:32 5K from Payton Jordan (off of “next to no running training” according to Nick Willis) is proof that she should handily repeat in the 10k. Schulist ran a huge personal best of 15:36 earlier in the year, and like Finn, likes to push the pace from the front. The last time O’Connor ran a 5K on the track was in 2013, when she won the Outdoor Big Ten title in 16:09. By the time the gun goes off for the 5K, O’Connor will have already run three races. Will she have enough left in the tank in the last 1000? Who will take the lead, Finn or Schulist? Regardless, Finn’s meet record of 15:48 from last year will go down. Julia Otwell and Lindsay Clark were members of MSU’s national championship XC team and will be in the chase pack with Penn State’s Elizabeth Chikotas.

Men’s 4x400m (Sunday May 17, 3:45pm)
All good championship meets end with a nail-biting 4x4. Spectators at Big Ten Outdoors are no strangers to this and regularly experience 3 minutes of fanatical cheering and valiant relay legs, the latter of which often determine the outcome of the team race. Last year, Nebraska’s quartet narrowly edged Illinois by 4 hundredths of a second. This winter, Illinois repaid the favor by 2 hundredths of a second AND Ohio State was within half a second! Those same three schools are ranked in the top 20 in the NCAA this outdoor season, having all run 3:05-3:06. This relay will be nuts, especially considering Illinois finished second as a team both this year indoors and last year outdoors. Regardless of if these three teams have a chance to clinch the team title in the final event of the meet, you can bet that they will be racing for pride. 

Women’s Team Race
Last year in West Lafayette, the Penn State women continued to assert their dominance of the conference with a winning margin of 33.5 points over Nebraska. Indoors this winter, Ohio State won by 15 points over a slew of teams within a few points of each other (Michigan, Penn State, Purdue, Michigan State, and Nebraska).

FloTrack’s take: You can’t count out home advantage. With dominant performances by their distance squad, Michigan State will stand on the podium along with indoor team champion Ohio State and last year’s team champion Penn State.

Men’s Team Race
Wisconsin won last year’s Outdoor team race, while Nebraska dismantled the competition indoors with a 41 point winning margin. The past few years have seen these two teams trade Big Ten team titles in both indoor and outdoor. However, while the favorites have kept their eyes on each other, contenders have been biding their time and putting the work in.

FloTrack’s take: Nebraska will win its second outdoor team title since joining the Big Ten in 2011. Wisconsin and Illinois will fight for second along with Michigan, a team on the rise. Michigan was the only team to score in every single mid-distance and distance event at Big Ten Indoors. Like the Spartan women, the Wolverines will rely on their distance runners to bring home a team trophy to Ann Arbor.