{"id":1719,"date":"2025-06-16T19:13:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/06\/16\/mcfarland-and-herger-compete-in-national-finals-1500-meter\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T19:13:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:13:15","slug":"mcfarland-and-herger-compete-in-national-finals-1500-meter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/06\/16\/mcfarland-and-herger-compete-in-national-finals-1500-meter\/","title":{"rendered":"McFarland and Herger compete in National Finals 1500 meter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships are a culmination of a year\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Two Michigan distance runners made the cut for that final lap this season \u2014 freshman Brendan Herger and sophomore Trent McFarland, in each runners\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019re 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThat wasn\u2019t how I expected it to go,\u201d McFarland said. \u201cIt was a pretty chaotic race, and you had to be on your toes the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The chaos didn\u2019t 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 \u2014\u00a0 Washington\u2019s fourth consecutive title in the event.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a race like that, your fate is decided with a lap to go,\u201d Herger said. \u201cYou can\u2019t move around guys on the curve when you\u2019re running 51 (seconds per lap) pace\u2026 you have to be in a position near the front.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t expected \u2014 or expecting \u2014 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 \u2014 and himself \u2014 in his first collegiate season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI honestly didn\u2019t have super high stakes for myself this year. At first my goal was \u2018maybe you can hit a Regional mark, if you make Regionals that\u2019s a success,\u2019 \u201d Herger said. \u201cAt any point I was ready for it to be my last race, but then I just kept going.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought I was good enough to race my way here last year, and I didn\u2019t,\u201d McFarland said.<\/p>\n<p>So he came back a year later, this time with more than just one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-track-and-field\/mcfarland-sets-program-record-at-michigan-invitational-in-his-only-800-meter-race-of-the-season\/\">school record<\/a> 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\u2019t satisfy McFarland, and his 11th place finish left some feelings of dissatisfaction in the young runner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d McFarland said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI have more in the tank as I get stronger aerobically,\u201d Herger said. \u201cHopefully I can take away as much as I can from this and in the future stay at the top of my class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s exactly what they have earned themselves as they begin to prepare for the next season.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships are a culmination of a year\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Two Michigan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1919,1392,1918,1917,1920,583],"class_list":{"0":"post-1719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-compete","9":"tag-finals","10":"tag-herger","11":"tag-mcfarland","12":"tag-meter","13":"tag-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1721,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}