The Michigan Daily - SportsMonday - March 29, 2004 - 3B Bercaw hits first career homerunI By Ian Herbert Daily Sports Writer Sometimes all it takes is one pitch. When sophomore Stephanie Bercaw came up to bat with two outs in the bot- tom of the third inning, the Michigan softball team was sitting comfortably on a seven-run lead in the first game of yesterday's doubleheader. The team had already broken the game open with six runs that inning, and Valparaiso had just made a pitching change. Michigan coach Carol Hutchins decided to switch things up a bit and brought in Bercaw to pinch-hit for sec- ond baseman Tiffany Haas. Bercaw took advantage of the opportunity. She swung at the first pitch she saw, and drove it out of the park to straightaway center. "I was just thinking 'See ball, hit ball,' and 'hit the strike,' " Bercaw said. "I try not to think about anything else. It just gets in the way. (The first pitch) was a strike." The three-run homer cleared the cen- ter field wall by at least five feet, but Bercaw wasn't sure it would make it. "I actually thought it would be a little bit short because I hit it up in the air too far," Bercaw said. Other than the fact that it caused the eight-run .rule to go into effect, the homerun was not critical to the outcome of the game. But it was the first home- run of Bercaw's college career. "It felt great," Bercaw said. "It felt great to see the team there at the end, waiting for me." Hutchins, who made the decision to make the switch in the batting order, denied speculations that she had a sixth sense that forced her to put Bercaw into the lineup for one pitch. "I never know what's going to hap- pen," Hutchins said. "I just wanted to give her an at-bat. She's been swinging a nice bat at practice, and she hasn't had very many at bats this year. "She's a good hitter. I was happy for her, and I'd like to see her gain a little confidence from it." There were some indications, howev- er, that Bercaw had the ability to leave the yard. In practice this week she has been hitting it deep. She doesn't have a place in the starting lineup, but she is used regularly as a pitch hitter. "She's capable of hitting that ball on the nose and hard," Hutchins said. "She took a good cut, and she's got the power." Because of her homerun, Bercaw never had a chance to bat again that game. She came up again in the second game of the doubleheader and drove a couple of hard-hit balls foul before striking out swinging. Bercaw came into the game in the bottom of the fifth inning with two run- ners on, and she was one of three hitters unable to drive them in that inning. Michigan left two runners on in the bot- tom of the sixth as well. In that inning, Michigan had two batters, Angie Churchill and Lauren Holland, who stuck out while looking. Hutchins said that she was not disappointed with leav- ing the runners on base, but she was upset with the Wolverines who went up to the plate looking at pitches. "The only thing that mattered was some of the people who went in there and took a lot of pitches," Hutchins said. "I just thought that was ridiculous. Go up there and get your cuts. There is no pressure on us. We don't have to get a hit to win the game. "I just felt that being aggressive was what we did well today, and I didn't think that, near the end of the game, we did it nearly as well." Men's crew teaching a lesson in investment SOFTBALL Continued from Page 1B producing runs. This weekend's 17 runs went a long way toward changing that. Hutchins was pleased with the team's production, but said that it needed to keep it up throughout the season. "We definitely have seen improvement, especially from the bottom half of our order," Hutchins said. "And that's something where we need to stay consistent. "I feel we were aggressive, and I think that showed on the scoreboard ultimately. We swung at the hittable pitches." The Wolverines have been hot as of late, winning 13 of their last 14 games. With the exception of the Bowling Green 9-5 win last week, they have not given up more than two runs in any of those games. Michigan moves into the Big Ten season next weekend when it travels to Indiana and Purdue. Wilson said that yesterday's games against Valparaiso were a good warmup for the rest of the year. "Hutch says to play every game the same, and that's the attitude that we're going to go into the Big Ten season with," Wilson said. J. BRADY MCCOLLOUGH The SportsMonday column The night before hitting the water against Cornell, one of the top teams in the nation year-in and year-out, the Michigan men's rowing team was busy making s'mores and staying warm at a Boy Scout camp in upstate New York. At least it got beds this time. Usually, you'll find the 60-plus team members packing into youth hostels or sleeping on YMCA gym floors just to get the chance to ruin some varsity team's morning. "One of the guys on our team two years ago would bundle his shirts up and use them as a pillow," senior Matt Hughes said. "You could put that kid anywhere and he'd be fine." You could say the same about this varsity-club program, made up of kids who pay more than $1,500 a year ($137,000 collectively) to pull an oar back and forth everyday and puke after- wards. The men of this crew invest their money, their bodies and their hearts into the hope that they can attend the ball with all the rich folks and dirty up their tuxedos on the way out. "Whether we're termed 'varsity,' 'varsity club,' whatever, when we go on the line and we're sitting there about to row, it doesn't matter," senior Sasha Duchnowski said. "It's the work you've put into it." "It's all us paying for it, and nobody is giving us anything," Hughes said. They give themselves everything they need through alumni donations and fundraising through a program called "Rent-a-rower," in which people from the Ann Arbor community pay members of the team to do random chores. Aside from the usual lot of rak- ing leaves and moving furniture, Hugh- es even had to clean a man's lawn chairs with a toothbrush once. "He was serious about his lawn chairs," Hughes said. "Where's he from?' Hughes, known as "the animal" by his teammates because of his beastly beard and superhuman genetic makeup, takes rowing pretty seriously. Like most of the team, he had no previous rowing RYAN WEINER/Daily TOP: Matt Hughes leads the first varsity eight boat. RIGHT: Those who stay will be... experience before joining coach Gregg Hartsuff's team his freshman year. Now, he's considered the top collegiate rower in the country, varsity rowers included. Hughes, who has upped his commit- ment to two or three practices per day, finished fifth at the World Indoor Row- ing Championships in Boston during Spring Break and was first among U.S. collegiate rowers. "Right before the competition, nobody knew who I was," Hughes said. The announcer went through the list of rowers who were competing and named their respective colleges and homelands. Then he got to Hughes. "Matt Hughes ... where's he from?" the announcer asked. "He just went on to the next person," Hughes said, laughing. It's getting tougher to overlook the Michigan program, a perennial finisher in the nation's top 10. Still, the team begins each season ranked out of the top 10. The rowing powers-that-be must keep hoping the team's performance the year before was somehow a fluke. So Michigan just keeps investing. Four hundred dollars for a Spring Break training trip to Tampa, Fla. Six back-breaking practices each week including Tuesday mornings bright and early on Ann Arbor's Argo Pond. "You have to have the heart to kill yourself harder than that guy has killed himself," Duchnowski said. "When we go to Cornell and race, they have a mil- lion-dollar boathouse. When they go to national championships, they stay in a hotel; we stay on a Salvation Army floor. We've all paid out of our pockets. "If I beat you, what did that boat- house do for you?" The purest form Hughes remembers his first impres- sion of Michigan's boathouse: "Man, that place is a dump." A dump, yes, but it's a fitting house for this team, built by the callused hands of the 1985 team. The first thing you see when you walk into the boathouse is a sign with Bo Schembechler's classic words paint- ed in maize and blue: Those who stay will be Champions. The funny thing is, MIKE HULSEBUS/Daily Shortstop Jessica Merchant connects with the pitch. not many kids stay. The team starts out with 70 freshmen each year - there are just five seniors on this year's squad. "It's a huge battle of attrition in this sport," Hughes said. "They are paying to put themselves in pain early in the morning. There are no cry-babies or prima donnas. We're here because we want to be." As junior Josh Brown put it, being on the team can almost be sadistic. Hartsuff, a rarity as a salaried club coach, is familiar with the pain and knows the guys on the team don't have to be there every day like on a varsity team. Even though he wishes the team received varsity funding, Hartsuff embraces the uniqueness of club status. "It's the purest form of sport there is," Hartsuff said. "It's the way intercol- legiate athletics started. We have peo- ple here who got into Michigan on their own and are here for academic purposes and end up finding our team. "I like working with people like that." Duchnowski quit the team before his junior year because he was worried the commitment would ruin his Business School grade point average. But after a year away, he chose to return to the team for his final year at Michigan because it "keeps me on my toes." "(It creates a better atmosphere) because the guys aren't here because they are getting a scholarship," he said. "It's an opportunity (for a regular stu- dent) to represent Michigan as a Wolverine and be an athlete." It's an opportunity to show the rest of the country - and the rest of campus -- that you don't have to be a varsity athlete or have a Nike swoosh on your jersey to be a champion. J' Brady McCollough can be reached at bradymcc@umich. edt. WOMEN'S TENNIS Netters crush Buckeyes in 7-0 win By Elen McOardty Daily Sports Writer They don't call her "Bam-Bam" for nothing. With her high- ly emotional and physical style of play, Elizabeth Exon quickly earned her nickname in her first season with the Michigan women's tennis team. During the Wolverines' match yesterday against rival Ohio State (2-1 Big Ten, 7-8 overall) - which No. 19 Michigan (3-0, 12-1) dominated 7-0 - Exon was in usual form playing No. 2 singles against Buckeye Erica Fisk. Her power and willingness to take wild shots attracted a crowd, and her passionate play seemed to symbolize everything a Michigan-Ohio State contest should be. Exon would tie it up or take a one-point lead, only to be passed or tied again by Fisk. "I was frustrated in general because this weekend I wasn't playing my best," Exon said. "And this girl just sent every- thing back. I was ahead in the second set and then she came back, and she was just hugely competitive. She just tried to get every ball back." By the time Exon had won the first set 6-3, but lost the sec- ond 6-7, the meet had already been decided - Michigan had claimed the doubles point and all of the other singles points. Officials ruled that Exon's match would end in a 10-point tiebreaker instead of taking the time to play out a third set. But from the match's intensity, one would never know that it didn't depend on the point between Exon and Fisk. "It's really intense because it's ten points to decide the match, it's not like tennis (should be) - you should play the third set out," Exon said. "And it's the same thing that hap- pened to me (on :Saturday against Penn State). So it was an emotional tie-breaker because it was Ohio State." Exon and Fisk traded the lead several times, but it was Exon who squeaked out to win 10-8. Even though Michigan won all matches, it wasn't for lack of effort on the side of Ohio State. Most matches saw the lead either go back and forth or remain close throughout. "Michigan is having a really good year so we expected them to do well," Ohio State senior Meaghan Colville said. "We beat them last year. Every win (over Michigan), no mat- ter what type of year we're having or they're having, it's always a good win." Colville's passion about the rivalry showed in her doubles matchup against Michigan's Kim Plaushines and Debra Strei- fler. Like Exon's, the match ended in a tiebreaker which Michigan won 7-3. "That match was awesome," Colville said. "I think we were very evenly matched. That combination (of players) - we hadn't played before (so) it was a really fun match to play in." Ohio State also may have been tired from its rigorous sched- ule - yesterday's game against Michigan was the team's 10th straight away game. In just the last week, the Buckeyes have played in Las Vegas, Dallas, East Lansing and now Ann Arbor. They even have another away game next week. "Our coach wanted to get us more outdoor matches to prepare us for the outdoor season," said Colville, explaining Ohio State coach Chuck Merzbacher's decision to create such a hectic schedule. Michigan's. win over Ohio State completed a successful weekend for the Wolverines, who also crushed Penn State in a 5-2 victory Saturday. IU REC SPORTS INT RA UR A L $ The University of Michigan Department of Recreational Sports Intramural Sports Program www.recsports.umich.edu 734-763-3562 REC SPORTS INTfRAMURALS FOOD FOR THOUGHT Vietnam and the Movies Which movies do Vietnam vets think are accurate? Not Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter or Hearts and Minds. Even Oliver Stone's autobiographical Platoon has received harsh criticism. Hamburger Hill, 84 Charlie Mopic and We Were Soldiers are the movies most praised by Vietnam Vets for their accurate portrayals of how it truly was. ^q Dlivers Inconrnnrated' I I 4 Beginning SCUBA Class $25 OFF Scuba Class with Ad Ann Arbor Classes $250 Classes Start: 2 nights/week -21/ weeks Tues/Thur April 6 6-10 pm ' Tues/Thur April 29 1t, pm, Classes Start: .1 night/week 5voe AMon/Wed 'April S 6-19P Men/Wed AprIl 7640 Gary Lillie & Assoc., Realtors www.garylillie.com Please take the time to nominate outstanding players and managers for the Intramural Sports Program Awards Ceremony. Nomination forms are available at all Intramural playing sites and our website: www.recsports.umich.edu/intramurals Nominations are due Friday, April 9t at 4:30 PM m W"...