The Illinois men’s track and field team finished in fourth place with 86 points at the Big Ten championships held this weekend at Ohio State. The Illini’s late surge on Sunday helped them usurp the Iowa and Ohio State on the last event of the competition.

Illinois’ meet started out with a lot of promise, gaining surprising third and seventh place finishes from Jim Riddle and Hunter Mickow in the 10,000-meter run on the first day of the tournament. Riddle finished the race in 29 minutes, 30.81 seconds while Mickow completed his run with 29:43.10.

In the hammer throw, sophomore Davis Fraker finished sixth with a season-best throw of 61.45 meters. That throw was good enough to earn three points for the team and round out their first day with 11 points and put them in fourth place.

Senior Jannis Toepfer competed for the Illini in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and earned himself a fifth place finish with a time of 8:55.18. Senior Ryan Lynn earned a season best time of 1:48.87 in the 800  and freshman Liam Markham completed the 1,500 with a personal best of 3:46.94. From the second day of competition, the team was able to qualify 10 athletes for the finals on the last day.

The Illini had four athletes rank in the top-nine spots in the pole vault with the highest finish in second place. Junior Cody Klein hit a mark of 5.16 meters for second, sophomore Matthew Bane and freshman Mitch Mammoser hit high marks of 5.06 meters for third-place and fifth-place finishes, respectively. Senior Josh Hodur finished just outside the point allotted places with a mark of 5.06 meters for ninth position.

The 400-meter relay squad of Julian Smith, Brandon Stryganek, Stephon Pamilton, and DJ Zahn qualified first in the preliminary round but ended up with a third place finish of 40.29 seconds in the finals.

Junior sprinter Vanier Joseph got the team its first Big Ten champion this outdoor season with a 13.70 second run for first place in the 110-meter hurdles. Not long after, Pamilton repeated the feat with a time of 46.06 seconds in the 400. Pamilton also came in fifth with 21.42 seconds in the 200.

This stretch of races built a surge for Illinois, which had previously been far down in the rankings, but surged up the standings pretty quickly. Freshman Ian Barnett continued the surge with a fourth-placed finish in the 5,000, coming in at 14:10.02.

The Illini’s last hoorah came in the final event of the day in the 1600-meter relay. The team of Zahn, Cameron Viney, Juan Green and Pamilton ran a relay lasting 3:09.00 to claim the second position in that distance. The team came agonizingly close with that performance but ultimately fell short of third-place Wisconsin by half a point.

Illinois will now take the next two weeks to train hard for the NCAA West preliminary round in Austin, Texas. The Illini are hoping to perform well there and qualify for the outdoor NCAA Championships next month.

Lanre can be reached at [email protected] and @WriterLanre.