The NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships are a culmination of a year’s worth of effort. While June temperatures warm up many collegiate runners begin cooling down, and only the most elite racers are consolidated to compete on the biggest stage as their months of training boil down to one final bell lap.
Two Michigan distance runners made the cut for that final lap this season — freshman Brendan Herger and sophomore Trent McFarland, in each runners’ first Nationals appearance. The pair of underclassmen placed ninth and 11th out of 12 competitors, respectively, in a tactical and tight 1500 meter final amongst a stacked field.
Before the race began, McFarland saw it going one of two ways: Either his opponents would pace the pack at a speed significantly slower than what they’re capable of in order to utilize racing tactics in a positional game, or they would get out as hot as they could from the gun in a more one-dimensional battle of wills.
What happened instead was something in between. Oregon mid-distance runner Simeon Burnbaum took the field out at a pace fast enough to remain uncomfortable, but controlled enough that every runner in the field could maintain it. The result was a single pack of 12 runners all jockeying and elbowing for better positioning for 1100 meters before the final lap became an all-out sprint.
“That wasn’t how I expected it to go,” McFarland said. “It was a pretty chaotic race, and you had to be on your toes the whole time.”
The chaos didn’t play in favor of Herger or McFarland. The duo was never able to jostle themselves into the top five from the outside lanes in order to have a chance to outkick those in front of them when the race picked up. Instead of going to one of the Wolverines, the victory went to Washington distance runner Nathan Green — Washington’s fourth consecutive title in the event.
“In a race like that, your fate is decided with a lap to go,” Herger said. “You can’t move around guys on the curve when you’re running 51 (seconds per lap) pace… you have to be in a position near the front.”
While Herger was stuck behind the leaders of the pack for the majority of the race Friday, he is anything but behind. While still a highly-touted recruit, Herger was not among the select few at the top of the 2024 recruiting class. He wasn’t expected — or expecting — to have a breakout season ending as the only member of the class to reach the 1500 meter final, but his 3:52.36 on Wednesday in his preliminary heat made just that the reality. Quite a feat came with a fair dose of surprise, which Herger has had to get used to this season as he continued to surpass the expectations of others — and himself — in his first collegiate season.
“I honestly didn’t have super high stakes for myself this year. At first my goal was ‘maybe you can hit a Regional mark, if you make Regionals that’s a success,’ ” Herger said. “At any point I was ready for it to be my last race, but then I just kept going.”
In the eyes of McFarland, the journey to Nationals felt overdue. After a promising freshman season that included a school record in the indoor Distance Medley Relay and multiple impressive marks in the 1500, his 3:39.81 at the NCAA East finals fell short of National qualifying.
“I thought I was good enough to race my way here last year, and I didn’t,” McFarland said.
So he came back a year later, this time with more than just one school record under his belt and multiple new personal records, and mustered the strength to qualify for a Nationals bid at the East Finals this time around. But unlike Herger, simply making it so far didn’t satisfy McFarland, and his 11th place finish left some feelings of dissatisfaction in the young runner.
“It’s hard to look at it and be perfectly content with (my season) when the final race of the season ends in what I consider a failure,” McFarland said.
Satisfied or unsatisfied, the pair was able to accomplish what only 12 runners in the nation could, and as underclassmen they have left themselves plenty of time on the clock to come back even stronger in future appearances at Nationals.
“I have more in the tank as I get stronger aerobically,” Herger said. “Hopefully I can take away as much as I can from this and in the future stay at the top of my class.”
There is nothing more important on big stages than experience having competed on them. And at the end of a highly successful season out of both the Michigan underclassmen, that’s exactly what they have earned themselves as they begin to prepare for the next season.
