Now one of the best runners in the conference, his career started by being told he couldn’t even compete at the Division I level. Three years later, senior Michael Van Voorhis finished second in the Big Ten championship behind only a fellow Badger.
His journey to becoming one of the top runners for Wisconsin, if not in all of the Big Ten, began on the Wisconsin Track Club, the school’s club team for track and field and cross country. Attempting to walk on to the team, Van Voorhis was guided there after approaching the director of track and field and cross country, Mick Byrne. Byrne didn’t actually expect to see him again, though.
“In my six years at Wisconsin, no guy has come up from Wisconsin Track Club and been that successful, and it’s very unlikely ever in Wisconsin history,” Byrne said.
Van Voorhis took the recommendation in stride, viewing it as an opportunity to continue proving himself and eventually work his way on to the team. He also did not know that his chances to make the transition were as slim as they were.
“I was all for it. Mick had said maybe a little bit of a lie, and said it was definitely a stepping stone to the team,” he said. “I just saw it as a necessary step to get to where I wanted to be.”
Once he eventually did get there, Van Voorhis still faced the challenge to constantly improve. As a sophomore, he finished 36th overall at the Big Ten championship. Last year he worked his way up to 13th, second-best on the team, and was named to the first-team All-Big Ten in cross country. This year he finished second for Wisconsin once again, but this time he set a personal best, 23:37.6 for 8K, on his way to finishing second overall in the conference.
Though it may have been surprising to coaches who passed up the opportunity to recruit him, Van Voorhis always believed in his abilities.
“I knew that coming into cross country with the summer that I had and the race experience that I had here at Wisconsin that I was set up to do something special that day,” he said.
In the last race of the cross country season, he had the opportunity to do something special once again, this time at the NCAA championship. As a team, the Badgers have had an incredible run of success, qualifying for the national meet a staggering 43 consecutive years and entering the 2014 championship with 18 consecutive Top 10 finishes.
The streak extended to 19 years in a row, with the team’s top runner Malachy Schrobilgen’s 10th place finish.
As just one of the two returning Badgers from last year’s NCAA team, along with Schrobilgen, Van Voorhis had his expectations set high after he finished 158th overall at last year’s NCAA meet in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Another impressive streak, Wisconsin has gone 24 years in a row with an All-American runner, an honor given to the top 35 finishers at the NCAA championship. And while personally extending that streak was something Van Voorhis had on his mind, there was another goal that played as a motivating factor.
“I think if I got 28th or better that’d be really cool cause at my state cross country meet in high school I was 28th,” he said. “Just to say that I came from not even being all-state in Minnesota to being all-American my senior year would be, that would be really cool just to say that.”
While he was unable to achieve that, Van Voorhis managed to improve yet again, finishing a career-best 110th at the NCAA championship.
Although his cross country season may have just ended, Van Voorhis still has both the upcoming indoor and outdoor track seasons to look forward to beginning in January. His recent success has extended to the track team, as he finished third at the Big Ten championship in his first-ever 10,000-meter race last May. Van Voorhis also ran the 5,000-meter race there, earning another Top 10 finish.
As for the future, the chemical engineering major has already accepted a job, but that won’t get in the way of his plans to keep running.
“I’ll keep running, I’ll give it a couple years still training at the high intensity that we are right now,” he said. “My plan is to run the Chicago Marathon next fall.”
Given his impressive climb through the college ranks, another strong performance likely awaits him there.
