LOUISVILLE, Ky. ? A season that began with a series of question marks for the University of Wisconsin men?s cross country team ended with a collective exclamation point for three seniors on the squad.
Just a month removed from being in limbo as to whether they would even run this year, Mohammed Ahmed and Reed Connor joined classmate Maverick Darling in racing to All-America honors and carrying the Badgers to a runner-up finish at the NCAA championships on Saturday at E.P. ?Tom? Sawyer State Park.
The finish marks the third straight top-three finish for the class, which led UW to its fifth national title last season. Ahmed and Darling also competed at the NCAA meet in 2009, when the Badgers finished seventh.
?For having as many question marks as we did early in the season, I can?t be happier with my guys,? Darling said. ?We take pride in this.?
Darling, a fifth-year senior, knew this season would be his last in a Badgers uniform. But returning All-Americans Ahmed and Connor didn?t join him in the UW starting box until the Big Ten Conference meet, as coach Mick Byrne was weighing whether to redshirt the duo and bring them back for a run at a title next year.
Byrne knew he?d have a dynamite front three, but he was waiting to see how the back end of the team developed during workouts.
?It was close, I think, but guys started showing up. Rob Finnerty, Alex Brill, Alex Hatz, Michael Van Voorhis, those guys started showing up,? Ahmed said. ?We thought we could win it, and look how close it was.?
Connor said the decision to go all in for 2012 wasn?t really all that hard, for one simple reason.
?We kind of knew that we were going to go after it, because ? Maverick,? Connor said. ?If Maverick could have redshirted, yeah, we might have said, ?All right, we?ll wait a year and give Hatz and Brill and some guys time to develop.??
Byrne finally decided to turn Ahmed and Connor loose before the Big Ten meet, and the Badgers responded by winning their 14th consecutive title. They followed that up by winning an 11th straight NCAA Great Lakes regional crown before finishing second to Oklahoma State in the national meet on Saturday.
Ahmed, Darling and Connor ran a good portion of the race together, and finished eighth, 11th and 12th, with just a 7?-second spread between them.
?To finish together like that, you can?t put it into words,? Darling said. We?ve been through so much together; we?ve done so much together. Various backgrounds, obviously. To have that bond that we have, and the brothership, whatever you call it, it?s just phenomenal.?
While the decision paid dividends for this year?s squad, it leaves next year?s team without a returning All-American. It will be the first Badgers team without once since the 2000 squad.
Despite that, Byrne was adamant that the decision was the right one.
?Absolutely,? Byrne said. ?Big Ten title, Great Lakes title, and now finishing second at the NCAA ? absolutely, it was the right decision for the program. We?ll worry about next year next year.?
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