Wisconsin Badgers
Wisconsin adidas Invitational
From land Down Under, McDonald sets high goals
October 15, 2015 | Men's Cross Country, Andy Baggot
Sophomore from Australia thriving in Badgers’ team-first atmosphere
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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. -- As far as Morgan McDonald is concerned, the recruiting process that brought him from Sydney, Australia, to the Wisconsin men's cross country team was "pretty normal."
Some might disagree.
McDonald was 16 when, fueled by a desire to bring his talents to the United States, he emailed a host of college running coaches to see if any would have interest in his gifts.
Roughly a week later he got a reply from Mick Byrne, the director of cross country and track and field for the Badgers and they began to correspond.
"I guess it was enough to spike his interest," McDonald said.
According to McDonald, the letter was pretty generic with a list of his times and accomplishments. He also forwarded one to the coaches at Princeton and Stanford, among others. He wound up making the roughly 30-hour journey from his homeland to the U.S. to visit those three campuses in one fell swoop.
"I liked here the best," McDonald said.
Of course, Byrne had not seen McDonald compete in person, but "at 15, 16 years old he put down some good times" on the way to the winning the under-16 and under-18 Australian nationals.
What ultimately sold Byrne on McDonald was feedback he received on McDonald from Malachy Schrobilgen and Troy Smith, two current Wisconsin teammates who got to know McDonald during the IAAF World Junior Cross Country Championships in 2013. Schrobilgen competed for the U.S. and Smith for his native Canada in the same race in Poland.
"They came back with rave reviews about the kid," Byrne said. "They thought his personality would fit right in here."
It has.
A year after debuting as the Freshman of the Year in the Big Ten Conference and placing second on the team in the NCAA meet – Wisconsin finished 11th – McDonald appears on the cusp of bigger things.
An important step along the performance arc will come Friday when the 11th-ranked Badgers host the prestigious Wisconsin adidas Invitational at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course adjacent to University Ridge Golf Course.
The men's 8-kilometer meet, which begins at 11:45 a.m., features 17 of the top 30 ranked schools in the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association poll, including six of the top 10.
The women's meet, which begins at 11 a.m., features 20 of the top 25 teams, including 14th-rated Wisconsin.
The adidas meet is a prime building block toward the Big Ten championship Nov. 1 and the NCAA meet Nov. 21. The senior-less Badgers come in as one of the youngest teams in the country and are led by Schrobilgen, a junior who's the two-time defending Big Ten champion.
"That's definitely the way we're thinking about it," McDonald said of the adidas get-together. "That's the right way for us to look at it.
"It's definitely a big race in of itself – it's a big deal – and running well there would obviously make me feel really good. But it's just part of a bigger picture. That's our season in the bigger picture."
A bonus for McDonald is that his father, Robert, a will be on hand to watch. He'll take time out from a dermatology conference in Chicago to see his oldest son compete.
What sold Morgan, a finance, investment and banking major, on running here?
"I just loved the team and the coaches and the facilities and all the places we get to run," he said. "It was just really cool. The whole university was pretty sweet as well.
One of the biggest adjustments McDonald had to make coming to Wisconsin was in its team culture. Where he grew up, everything from training to competition is geared toward the individual.
"It's more on you to do everything," he said.
The foundation for the Badgers is built more on collaboration and chemistry.
"Everything we do is for the betterment of the team," McDonald said. "We compete together.
"At a program like this, if I'm running bad I'm letting down a lot of other people as well, because of the team aspect. There's a lot more responsibilities because you have to look out for all the people around here.
"It's a good culture. It makes it a lot of fun."
McDonald said he started running at the age of 8 as a way to maintain his fitness for soccer. He fell in love with the sport of running and devoted himself full-time to it when he was in his mid-teens.
His passion was so acute that McDonald turned his mother, Adrienne Torda, into a regular road racing competitor. In fact, she accompanied him on his whirlwind recruiting trip to Madison, Princeton, New Jersey, and Palo Alto, California, and took part in a run in Las Vegas.
"We had a lot of laughs on the visit," Byrne said of McDonald and his mother, a physician specializing in infectious diseases. "We felt it was a good fit."
Byrne said an attractive element of McDonald's background is that he recorded strong times despite being under-developed in high school.
"The goal all along his freshman year was to just keep adding on a little bit more work as the months went by," Byrne said of McDonald, who ran indoor track but redshirted outdoors last year. "He adapted very well to that."
McDonald still isn't at the training at the level of, say, Schrobilgen or sophomore Joe Hardy, but he's increased his workload 20 to 25 percent over his freshman year, according to Byrne.
"We're kind of excited to see what kind of results we'll get out of that," Byrne said. "We always felt the best was to come."
McDonald is seeing his college career unfold according to plan.
"I just saw this as a place where I could really flourish and improve," he said.
Players Mentioned
