BUFFALO, N.Y. - The only things Kevin Sullivan took home from his final NCAA Championships this weekend were the scratches on his right elbow. Michigan's best chance for a national title came crashing to the UB Stadium track, just 700 meters from glory.
His friend and teammate John Mortimer, though, found himself on the podium twice, helping the men's team to a 23rd place finish. He finished second in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and seventh in the 5,000-meter run. Senior Tania Longe, Katie McGregor - who finished second in the 5,000 - and Nicole Forrester also contributed to the women's 15th-place team score of 15.
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| RICK FREEMAN/Daily Michigan's Tania Longe wasn't happy with her performance in most events of the heptathlon. But later she decided a seventh-place overall finish wasn't that bad, after all.
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When Sullivan fell, he picked himself up almost before the crowd was finished gasping, and was just 50 meters behind the pack, he estimated.
It must have seemed like miles.
"I was just stunned more than anything," Sullivan said. He made it to the finish in 3:57.37, over 15 seconds behind Seneca Lassiter, the runner from Arkansas who Sullivan nosed out at the finish of this year's indoor 1,500.
He never considered giving up.
"I've never dropped out of a race before, and I wasn't about to start here," Sullivan said.
Sullivan's tumble came when the runner in front of him fell.
"He just ran up on the guy in front of him," Sullivan said.
And ran over Sullivan's dreams of ending his Michigan career on a high note.
Michigan's best finish was second, by Mortimer in the 3,000 steeplechase and McGregor in the 5,000 run. In the steeplechase, Mortimer led near the end but was passed by defending champion Matt Kerr of Arkansas.
McGregor never led her race, as Arizona's Amy Skeiresz darted out to an early lead that grew as the race wore on. McGregor ran in third for most of the race and held off a surging pack, moving into second and chasing Skeiresz to the finish.
"I never really gave up," McGregor said "At no point are you like 'I can never catch them.'"
Michigan's only field event participant, Nicole Forrester, earned fourth in the high jump by clearing 6-foot-1/2 inch, equaling her jump in last year's championships. Tania Longe secured seventh place in the heptathlon with 5,364 points, using a strong surge in the final event, the 800.
"I felt the pressure," Longe said. And she responded. Longe frowned her way through the first six events, - "I'm not happy with it at all," she said.
But when she moved up a spot, to seventh, after the final event, she was all smiles.
Longe said she usually saves her best performance in the heptathlon for Big Tens -as she did this year, too - but the effort usually leaves her too drained to place nationally.
"I'm usually dead meat from Big Tens," she said.
Michigan's two sprinters at nationals, Brian Theisen and Maria Brown, failed to qualify in the 110 hurdles and the 100 run, respectively.
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