Michigan's Women's Team and Individual champion Erin Finn and Wisconsin's men's Team and Individual Champion Morgan McDonald Grind Out Big 10 Victories

The operative word at the Big Tens this year was "grind."  Women's champion Erin Finn, who led her team to victory, said that was the method they used: "just go out there and grind."  Wisconsin coach Mick Byrne, echoed Finn, calling the Badger's individual champ, Morgan McDonald, and the rest "a team of grinders."

Aussie native Morgan McDonald leads the Wisconsin
Badgers to the team title by winning the individual
men's race in the Big 10 Championships.
Photo by Gene Niemi

While the Wolverines won a three-way battle in the women's team race, the men's race was a nail biter.  As some of the Badger team members made their way back to the "tent city" where the teams were "housed," after the race a non participating member of the team, hobbling along on crutches, pleaded with his teammates not to put him through the anxious moments where the team race was up for grabs again.

"Three points!!  Don't do that to me!!" he said, reacting to the fact that the Badger's margin of victory had everyone enduring an  excruciating wait until  the official  announcement of what team emerged triumphant.

For the first 5K of the 8K men's race it appeared that Michigan State was in the driver's seat with nearly the entire team at or near the front of a lead pack that had few stragglers.  The difference between first to last place was merely the length of a dense group of runners who hit the 5K mark within seconds of the one another in a time of 15:20.

A fan standing by the finish watching watching  the race unfolding on the jumbotron said that someone in that crowded pack should sacrifice himself by surging to the front and challenging others to cover his move.  The objective being to break up the field and the seeming stranglehold the Spartans had on the team title.

The runner who bolted, however, was Michigan State's Sherod Hardt. He was shadowed by Wisconsin's McDonald who seemed on "cruise control" as the duo battled for the top two spots.

Their acceleration fractured the pack, stringing out the runners who  had seemed to have been shoulder-to-shoulder, pasted together for more than half the race.  Following their leader, McDonald's teammates began grinding through the now fractured pack toward the front as Michigan State's men were displaced from their domination of the team race.

In the next two kilometers McDonald easily pulled away from Hardt as his teammates confidently crushed the Spartans, moving from to  58 points behind to two points ahead. Michigan State could not respond as the Badgers ground away toward the front of the chase pack and held on to win the team race by three points.

There was no matching drama in the women's race as Finn, not wanting to repeat her only defeat of the season in September at the Griak Invitational, took off during the first mile and never looked back.   Her teammates were equally dominant "grinding out" a win by gradually opening an increasingly larger gap over the Spartans and holding off a late charge by Penn State.