The Wildcats finished fourth at the GLIAC Outdoor Championship that was held about a week and a half ago.

Two athletes reached the podium and earlier in the spring, the 4-by-200-meter relay team set a school record. This was also the fourth straight year that NMU has finished in the top five at the GLIACs, which ties a program best.

“Overall, I was definitely happy with how it went,” Northern head coach Jenny Ryan said in a Zoom interview last week. “We scored some points definitely where we thought we would. We had some results higher in some events than we thought we would. We were a little lower in some different events than we thought we would.

“So it ended up evening out from the points we thought we could score overall. But (I was) very happy with how the season ended with the adversity and how few meets; we had to miss one meet in there and then indoor we missed two meets. So definitely happy how we ended up with what we had.

Jenny Ryan

“And we had some injuries, a few missing people for the year, so overall, a great result for this year.”

One of the two podium finishers at the GLIAC meet was senior Nina Augsten, who finished second in the heptathlon at the GLIACs. Ryan said that Augsten put in some extra effort between the indoor and outdoor season.

“She really worked hard,” Ryan said. “I think in the indoor, she hadn’t trained as well kind of during that winter break and she realized that during that indoor season. So she really put a lot of effort in throughout through this outdoor season.

“She’s just a competitor. She still did well indoor, but she wanted to do really well for the team and the entire team. We talked about how every person on the team, we needed them to contribute to be able to have the success we did. And she gave it her all and she competed not only in that event, but then she also scored in the javelin and in the hurdles.

“So not an easy couple days for her, she was pretty exhausted by the end.”

Nina Augsten

The other athlete who reached the podium was freshman Selena Johnson, who won the triple jump. Johnson also competed in the Dr. Keeler Invitational “last chance” meet in suburban Chicago last weekend for a chance to earn a spot at the NCAA Division II Championships at the end of May. While Johnson won the triple jump at the North Central College-hosted event, it wasn’t with a big enough distance to make the national meet.

Ryan said Johnson was only two centimeters away from hitting an NCAA meet provisional mark in previous meets, so there was a good chance she could qualify. She would’ve been the only Wildcat to make nationals.

“This year, it’s a reduced field,” Ryan said of the NCAA nationals before Johnson went to Naperville, Illinois. “There are 25% fewer athletes. So it’s already challenging to make it to nationals, but it’s even more challenging this year.

“But she does have a chance and it’s also just a great experience for her to do one more meet to see what she can do to prepare, so that next year, she’ll definitely be able to be at the national championships.”

When analyzing the season as a whole, but specifically with the GLIAC finals, Ryan said she was happy with how her squad dealt with all the coronavirus issues and protocols and came together during difficult times.

“Just across the board, even though we only had the two podium finishes (at the conference championships), we had a lot of fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, a lot of the top 10,” she said. “So I’m very encouraged of the direction that our program is going and just the efforts of the student-athletes.

“Dealing with the adversity, but they put everything into this last team event and supported each other and gave it their all to see what we could do at the end. They’re all really motivated for next year, so just happy with my team and what they accomplished.”

The Wildcats also look like they’ll have a strong squad coming back next season as Ryan said the majority of athletes will return this fall for cross country and the winter and spring for track and field.

“The great thing is we have pretty much this entire team coming back because a lot of them have the extra whole indoor and outdoor season and then some of the cross country kids have another cross country season,” she said. “So we have this entire team, except for two athletes, coming back. And yes, then we also have a good group coming in. So there should be some good things coming up.”

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.