Junior pole vaulter Terry Batemon captured the only outdoor Big Ten Championship for the Hoosiers on Sunday as the 2015 Championships came to a close in East Lansing, Mich.
Batemon failed the first two of three attempts on every height that he cleared, including his championship height and personal record of 5.36 meters.
“I was cramping up the whole time,” Batemon said. “Coach (Wiseman) just kept telling me to believe that I could win, and once I hit that 5.31 mark, I really started to believe.”
Batemon, who claimed IU’s seventh Big Ten pole vault championship in the last eight years, defeated Steven Cahoy of Nebraska and Tim Ehrhardt of Michigan State on the final height to find his first victory of the 2015 outdoor season.
Redshirting his 2014 outdoor season due to two separate hamstring injuries, Batemon said he felt good this season and this weekend.
“Going through all of the pain and all of the training and work was all worth it,” Batemon said. “It feels great.”
Though Batemon won the championship, it was not pretty, as he missed the highest possible attempts while still winning a pole vault event.
“It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t clean,” IU Coach Ron Helmer said, “but he was the most deserving because of the way in which he competed.”
Another athlete who's victories eluded this season is sophomore heptathlete Michelle Adeniyi, who placed seventh Saturday in the women’s heptathlon. Her total of 4,818 points is the eighth-best mark in IU history.
Even though she did not win the event, Adeniyi set personal bests in five of the seven events, including a second-place finish in the shot put with a toss of 12.63 meters.
“I was mentally focused and well-rested,’ Adeniyi said. “A lot of things clicked and fell together at the right time.”
Adeniyi scored her first Big Ten Championship points as a Hoosier, after finishing ninth in the Big Ten Indoor Championships in the pentathlon, just outside of scoring position.
“I’m not satisfied with where I finished,” Adeniyi said, “but it’s a great place to build from, and it allows me to start at a higher level early next season.”
Last season’s lone Hoosier champion, senior distance runner Rorey Hunter, competed in the same event he claimed in 2014, the 1,500-meter run.
After a tactical competition, resulting in a slower time, Hunter fell just short of another championship, finishing in second place with a time of 3:57.48.
Another senior who competed in his last Big Ten Championship was senior sprinter Derrick Morgan, who made the final in the 400-meter dash and finished seventh, with a tie of 47.66 seconds.
“That’s what we expect from these seniors and our leaders on the team,” Helmer said. “We expect them to go out and compete, and that’s what they did this weekend.”
A few top-five performances included the women’s 400-meter relay, comprised of freshman McKayla Eves, sophomore Ari Nelson, freshman Danielle Beniulis and senior Shawntanay Johnson, finished fifth with a time of 45.90 seconds, the ninth-best time in IU history.
Sophomore Amanda Behnke finished second in the women’s 10K with her time of 34:14.17, and freshman Jill Whitman claimed seventh place in the women’s 5K with 16:38.95 and scored points in her second Big Ten Championship of her young career.
Though there were positive performances, both IU teams finished 12th, the men scoring 28 points and the women scoring 26, much lower than the team thought it could do.
“It’s was really a mixed bag this weekend,” Helmer said. “Yeah, this season was meant for growth and identifying who could carry the team next season, but we also thought that, with this group, we could get more than what we did. We will focus on the positives, though, headed in to regionals and next season.”
