#17 USATF Nationals Round-Up

In This Issue

• Nationals Round-Up

• More Michiganders In Budapest

• Jackson & Waldron Shine At U20 Nationals

• A New Find At USATF JO Regional

• Legend: Bill Bonthron, Michigan’s 1500 World Record Breaker

• The Little Things At The End

• Useful Links

How Did We Do?

Thank God for Freddie Crittenden and Anna Cockrell. We had to wait till the last day of the USATF meet in Eugene to get some sure-fire Michigan qualifiers onto Team USA! Until then it was looking grim. Not to take anything away from any of our people out there, but we were kind of getting beat-up this time around. Of all of our entrants, only two PRed (Crittenden & Samuel Black) and only one other delivered season-best marks (Stark).

Before a big meet like this, Track & Field News publishes a top 10 formchart (which I have nothing to do with). That chart predicted 6 top 10 finishes for Michigander women and 8 for men. Our women indeed earned 6 such finishes, but not quite as predicted. Four came in better than predicted: Grace Stark, Kristen Leland, Corinne Jemison and Malin Smith. Our men only got half the top 10 finishes forecast, with only one athlete overachieving (Crittenden had been tabbed for 6th) and Brian Williams matching his prediction of 3rd.

Our Team US qualifiers for Budapest: Freddie Crittenden (110H) & Anna Cockrell (400H). Brian Williams (DT) is a likely team member, but he doesn’t have the standard yet. Currently he is listed at 26 in the WA Rankings (they’re taking 36). His team place will not be confirmed till the end of the month.

Corinne Jemison (DT) has reportedly been selected for the team that will be competing at the Pan-Am U23 Championships. We may have others on that squad, but USATF has not released the roster yet.

Code: q=qualified to next round; nq=did not qualify; w=wind-aided; SB=season best; PR=personal record.

• M400—Matthew Moorer (Ypsilanti Lincoln) - Heat 46.35nq (5th)

• M1500—Hobbs Kessler (Ann Arbor Skyline) - Heat 3:42.95q (2nd); Final 3:36.08 (6th)

• M1500—Nick Foster (Ann Arbor Pioneer) - Heat 3:40.85nq (5th)

• M-Steeple—Nathan Mylenek (Pontiac Notre Dame) - Heat 8:51.94 (11th)

• M5000—Grant Fisher (Grand Blanc) - withdrew, stress reaction in femur

• M5000—Morgan Beadlescomb (Algonac) - 13:38.69 (13th)

• M10,000—Grant Fisher (Grand Blanc) - 28:25.61 (4th)

• M110H—Freddie Crittenden (Utica) - Heat 13.32q (2nd); Semi 13.23q (3rd); Final 13.23 (3rd)

• M-PV—Trevor Stephenson (East Kentwood) - 18-4.75/5.61 (8th)

• M-TJ—Isaiah Griffith (Detroit East English) - 52-7.5/16.04 (9th)

• M-DT—Andrew Evans (Portage Northern) - 184-4/56.19 (14th)

• M-DT—Brian Williams (Fraser) 207-10/63.36 (3rd)

• M-JT—Chandler Ault (Midland-homeschool) 237-1/72.26 (7th)

• M-Decathlon—Steven Bastien (Saline) - DNF (9 events)

• M-Decathlon—Ryan Talbot (Forest Hills Central) - 7532 (10th)

• M-Decathlon—Heath Baldwin (Kalamazoo Hackett) - 8024 (6th)

• M-Decathlon—Samuel Black (Pinckney) - 7946 PR (8th)

• M-Decathlon—Mason Mahacek (Grand Haven) - DNF (4 events)

• W200—Anavia Battle (Wayne Memorial) - Heat 22.49wq (3rd); Semi 22.76nq (6th)

• W200—Kyra Jefferson (Detroit Cass Tech) Heat 22.80wq (6th); Semi 23.08nq (8th)

• W400—Taylor Manson (East Lansing) - Heat 52.79nq (6th)

• W1500—Natalie Cizmas (Clinton Twp Chippewa Valley) - Heat 4:28.54 (12th)

• W100H—Grace Stark (White Lake Lakeland) - Heat 12.83q (3rd); Semi 12.74q SB (4th); Final 12.70 SB (8th)

• W400H—Anna Cockrell (Country Day MS) - Heat 55.74q (1st); Semi 55.44q (2nd); Final 54.24 (3rd)

• W400H—Mariel Bruxvoort (GR South Christian) - Heat 59.01nq (5th)

• W-400H—Erin Dowd (Brighton) - Heat 56.99q (6th); Semi 58.34nq (8th)

• W-PV—Kristen Leland (Remus Chippewa Hills) - 14-3.5/4.36 (=8th)

• W-PV—Gabriela Leon (East Kentwood) - 14-3.5/4.36 (=8th)

• W-DT—Corinne Jemison (East Kentwood) - 183-11/56.07 (6th)

• W-DT—Malin Smith (Lansing Waverly) - 181-7/55.36 (8th)

• W-Heptathlon—Cheyenne Williamson (Essexville-Garber) - 4190 (13th) (no points in LJ, 800)

More Michiganders in Budapest!

Ann Arbor Huron alum Cindy (Ofili) Sember won her fourth British title in the 100 hurdles in 12.98 and will be representing Great Britain in the Hungarian capital. The Olympic 4th-placer from 2016, she ran 5th in last year’s Worlds.

Ogemaw Heights grad Alex Rose will be representing Samoa in the discus. It will be his sixth Worlds. He had his highest finish, 8th, last year in Eugene. His Samoan record of 231-0 (70.42) ranks him fifth on the current world list.

We’re still awaiting word on the Nigerian team, but Brother Rice grad and NCAA champion Udodi Onwuzurike is a likely member of the squad in the 100, 200 and 4×1. Onwuzurike did not compete in the recent Nigerian championships, nor did Big 10 indoor 400 champ Dubem Amene (SouthField Christian alum) who represented the West African country at Worlds last year.

And on the not-nearly-as-exciting media beat, I have a press credential and will be working there for my 15th World Outdoor Champs.

Jackson & Waldron Highlight U20 Nationals

Renaissance alum Kaila Jackson, now running for Georgia, blitzed the 100 field in Eugene and won the event going away, her 11.15 putting her 0.14 ahead of 2nd.

Nonah Waldron, the Oak Park senior, now USC-bound, came through with a PR in the 100 hurdles Saturday finishing 4th, her 13.36 slicing 0.17 from her best and making her No. 2 in state history. Then on Sunday, she placed 5th in the 400 hurdles in 58.67. That’s the No. 2 performance in state history after her own record 58.10 from 2021.

Caleb Jarema made the team for the NACAC U20 meet in Puerto Rico with his runner-up finish in the steeple.

Here’s our round-up of all the Michiganders in the junior meet:

• M-Steeple—Caleb Jarema (Pinckney) 8:50.49 PR (2nd)

• M400H—Tamaal Myers II (Detroit Cass Tech) Heat 52.57 (2nd); Final 52.32 (4th)

• M400H—Jaylin Holmes (East Kentwood) Heat 53.24 (2nd); Final 52.33 (6th)

• W100—Kaila Jackson (Detroit Renaissance) - Heat 11.30q (1st); Final 11.15 (1st).

• W200—Kaila Jackson (Detroit Renaissance) - did not compete.

• W3000—Rylee Tolson (Stockbridge) - 9:53.39 (4th)

• W5000—Rylee Tolson (Stockbridge) - 17:19.49 (4th)

• W100H—Nonah Waldron (Oak Park) - Heat 13.53q PR (3rd); Final 13.36 PR (4th)

• W400H—Nonah Waldron (Oak Park) - Heat 59.47q (3rd); Final 58.67 (5th)

• W400H—Mya Georgiadis (Ann Arbor Huron) - Heat 58.87q (2nd); Final 57.74 (3rd)

• W-HJ—Milena Chevallier (Farmington Hills Mercy) - 5-9.75 (4th)

• W-PV—Sophia Mettes (Dexter) - 13-1.5/4.00 (=6th)

USATF Junior Olympic Regional

The USATF version of the JO Regional just doesn’t get the numbers or the quality/depth that the AAU version does. That’s long been a reality in our state. However, this year’s meet, held at Oakland University on Saturday and Sunday, produced a few eye-opening performances.

The best came from Willow Mason, an 8th-grader at Saginaw White Pine. She placed 2nd in the 15-16 100m after an impressive 12.60 heat into a headwind. Then, after a wind-aided 24.93 heat (2.1), Mason won the 200 final in a legal 24.75 (1.1 wind).

On the boys side, Canton’s Quincy Isaac won the 17-18 long jump at 22-7.25. Merrick Hocking won the 17-18 hammer with a 171-0, moving to No. 3 in state history. West Bloomfield junior Curtis Sharif placed 2nd in the decathlon with 5144 points.

Legend: Bill Bonthron, Michigan’s 1500 World Record Breaker

After Bill Bonthron broke the World Record in the 1500, his track coach at Detroit Northern High admitted he didn’t remember him too well.

Bonthron ran at Northern for two years (1927 and ‘28) before his wealthy parents sent him to the exclusive Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire to finish up high school. He improved to 4:35.0 in the mile, but never broke a school record.

As a Princeton soph, “Bonnie” flourished. He ran 9:25.96 for 2nd in the 1932 IC4A 2 mile. Described as “burly,” he trained just as much in the weightroom as he did on the track. His stride was a beautiful, driving motion and his kick was ferocious.

In 1933 he won a 1:53.5/3:53.82 IC4A double. His only loss of the outdoor season came in the Oxford-Princeton dual, where Jack Lovelock of New Zealand broke the World Record in the mile in 4:07.6. Behind him, Bonthron set the American Record with his 4:08.7.

His senior season came close to perfection after a cross country disaster—leading in the final strides of the IC4A (the closest thing to an NCAA XC final at the time), he collapsed and was hospitalized, ending his season. He ran well indoors. At the AAU he got nipped by Glenn Cunningham at the 1500 finish, but they both got credit for a World Indoor Record 3:52.2. He then lost to Cunningham’s World Record 4:06.7 mile at Princeton in June.

However, he bounced back to win the NCAA in 4:08.9. At the AAU Championships in Milwaukee, he brought down Cunningham with his kick, breaking the 1500 World Record at 3:48.8. He won most of his races on a tour of Europe, setting a world best 3:00.8 for three-quarters of a mile in Stockholm. The AAU honored him with the Sullivan Award.

Bonthron never liked running, and often said he would retire after college. He went to work as a broker and only ran four races in 1935, losing all of them. Then in 1936, he tried to rally for the Olympics. His speed was good (a reported world best 1:20.0 for 660 yards), but his results so-so. Then he shocked by winning the Semi Olympic Trials in 3:55.2. At the Final Olympic Trials in New York, he ran 3:53.7—his fastest race since his World Record—but finished a heartbreaking 4^th , missing the team by 1.5 seconds. It was to be his final race.

Bill Bonthron died in 1983 in New York at the age of 70, after having spent his working career as a corporate accountant.

The Little Stuff At The End

Grand Rapids Invitational: Also last weekend, I heard there might have been some good performances at a youth meet in the Furniture City. Alas, like many summer meets, no one posted the results anywhere obvious, so who knows?

All-Comers Meets: It’s nice to see them being hosted in various places around the state. It’s a great way for some of our young ones to work on technical skills and just have fun with the sport in the summer months. Personally, it was a cool thing in our family to make the long drive (for us) to Grand Ledge a few times each summer so our kids could run a few fun races at one of Michigan’s longest-running all-comer series, and then gorge on ice cream afterwards at the Lickety Split. Speaking of which—if any kids run marks in events that would make the elite lists, please let us know. As long as the timing and officiating was up to snuff, those marks count!

State Meet Expansion: Not us—Ohio. Saw an interesting article from Cincinnati (behind a paywall now) about a track coach leading the campaign to change Ohio’s three divisions at the state finals to four. Lots of strong feeling down there. On the one hand, I get it. It sucks losing to bigger schools that are mathematically hard to challenge. On the other hand, remember all the semi-political fuss about “every kid gets a trophy” that had even some pediatricians chiming in on how that was damaging to America’s youth? Maybe sometimes it’s better to fight it out in a bigger pond? (I must confess to being a fan of California and Indiana having a single state meet, and New Jersey having an all-class state meet the week after their division meets.)

It’s Wednesdays Now! You’ve probably seen the portents that I’m discovering that a weekly newsletter is pretty hard to pull off when life keeps throwing curve balls at you (as some of my predecessors will attest). This week, with USATF coverage at my day job, combined with what I was convinced was brink-of-death pneumonia (but what my doc said was bronchitis), have finally convinced me that having the newsletter come out Tuesday meant that too often I wouldn’t have time to do my real job and still digest the weekend action for my Michigan audience. So we’ll try Wednesdays and see if that works better.

(However, if you are the billionaire owner of a sketchy tech firm that’s been laundering money for the Russians and you need to donate a few mill to a 501c3 so that you can fly under the IRS radar and possibly avoid prison, Michtrack is your guy. I would gladly do daily newsletters for the rest of my life if we found a major sponsor—even a sketchy one!)

XC Season Approaches! You can tell by the social media feeds of many of our coaches who treat the run-up to fall like they are little kids counting the days to Christmas. What does that mean for the Michtrack Newsletter? We’ll still be rolling, covering some of the big XC meet results and doing interviews with major competitors. However, we’re not going to forget the rest of the sport, so you’ll be hearing from various (non-distance) track athletes as well, and taking the time we have to delve more into our real passion, the history of the sport. And we need to give credit where credit is due: no one covers XC in depth (and I’m talking microscopic depth) like Matt Armelagos and his MI XC Speed Ratings page. So I urge you to keep an eye on what’s happening there if you really want to be in tune with high school XC in the state.

Useful Links:

• Track & Field News - Please, support my employer! Where else are you going to find coverage of the entire sport? (Definitely alluding to last weekend’s USATF meet and one of the media companies bragging that they had 61 interview videos covering all the action one night—which meant dozens with 10K runners and none with the javelin throwers.)

• Michtrack Elite Lists - Sorry, still a week+ behind on updates, but USATF, sickness (cough, cough), etc.

• State Records - This is where they are.

• All-Time Lists for Michigan - Only updated at the end of the year, so 2023 not included yet.

• The Michtrack Results Archive - if your school’s old results aren’t here, find a scanner and get to work.

• History of the State Track Meet - On Amazon. We’re working on a new edition, so hopefully good news later this summer (if the bronchitis doesn’t kill me, and I don’t get kidnapped for ransom in Hungary).

• History of the State XC Meet - The definitive history (but always, research continues, and the next edition will have even more).

• How To Race The Mile (or 1600) - Gotta admit I’m still proud of this book, which won the Track & Field Writers of America award for best book of the year over the Suzie Favor-Hamilton book that talked about prostitution.

• Birds By Google Street View - Not a thing to do with track, but this is wild! There are people who scan endless street images from Google and look for birds they can identify. This private Facebook group has identified over 1500 species so far (there are only 10,000+ species on Earth)! I mean, I’m a bird guy, and even I think this is extreme. But still, the stat guy in me says: Respect!