The Michigan Daily I michigandaily.com I April 12, 2010
Character Study
How Red Berenson has spent
26 years making Michigan Men
RYAN KARTJE I DAILY SPORTS EDITOR
Chris Fox stood at the corner of
State and Hoover Street, unsure of
where he would go from there.
His path to college hockey had
been laid before him like the yellow
brick road. Nearly every Division I
hockey program had shown interest
in him, so he had options at his dis-
posal. He was going to be a star no
matter what corner of the country
he ended up in.
It was 1993 and his decision had
been narrowed down to just three
schools. Bill Cleary, who had won
the NCAA Championship just a few
years prior, wanted him in Harvard
Crimson. Ron Mason, the win-
ningest coach in college hockey his-
tory,thoughtheshouldbeaSpartan.
And then there was Michigan.
With Yost Ice Arena a block
south, Fox glanced up from in front
of Weidenbach Hall and an unfore-
seen bout of nerves began to set in.
Flanked by his parents, the
17-year-old fought down the nerves,
and took the stairs up to a corner
office that overlooked the busy Ann
Arbor street, which he stood on just
moments ago.
He knew who waited on the other
side of the thick wooden door.
As the door opened, Fox peered
in at a man that he had only heard
of before. His reputation, to say the
least, preceded him.
Fox had heard that he took a great
deal of his coaching acumen from
Scotty Bowman, who had just taken
over as head coach of the Detroit
Red Wings. But at this moment, the
coach, with his skin cracked and
rough and his blue eyes piercing,
felt more like Clint Eastwood circa
Dirty Harry.
So the nerves came back, this
time like a tidal wave.
This is Red Berenson. He's a leg-
end, Fox thought to himself.
The coach stood before the
Foxes, just as many other coaches
had before him. Cleary and Mason
glowed about Chris's potential.
"What can we do for you?," they
would ask.
But this coach, the same man
who scored six goals in a game for
the St. Louis Blues, the same man
who won NHL Coach of the Year in
1981, the same man who had single-
handedly made Michigan relevant
again, wasn't the glowing type.
"So," the coach said turning to
Chris Fox, "What can you do for
Michigan?"
Fox was stunned.
For months, coaches catered to
his needs, promised him playing
time. What did he owe this man he
had just met? Who was recruiting
whom here?
The coach sensed his hesitation.
He had a knack for that sort of thing,
like this moment was all scripted
beforehand, as if he was prepared
for Fox's apprehensive response. It
was part of the game.
"If you want to be a Michigan
Man, you should know in the next
week," the coach said to the recruit,
who looked and felt much more like
a kid than he did when he walked
into the office just minutes before.
"It will justbecome clear."
Fox left bearing the weight of
words he didn't quite understand.
What was it about this coach that
gave him license to give him an ulti-
matum? He wasn't sure. Berenson's
aura had left him shaken, but even
more curious.
So the Foxes made their way
down the block to Yost Ice Arena
that Friday to watch Michigan, in
future Hobey Baker-winner Bren-
dan Morrison's debut, defeat Notre
Dame in a rout, 13-0.
The steely glare. The ultimatum.
The aura. It all seemed to make
sense to the 17-year-old after the
game.
Chris Fox marched up to Beren-
son's office soon after the game
ended that night and committed. He
wanted tobea Michigan Man.
Renovations in 1996, soon after-
Fox's meeting, opened up a room
perched at the top of Yost Ice Arena
which would become Berenson's
office. It was supposed to function
as a library of sorts,.the coach tells
me, but that didn't make any sense.
I look around confused. This
place sure looks like a library, I
think to myself.
.Berenson reads my mind. "I
guess it's more likea museum now,"
he says.
He's right. The room is lined with
trophies, plaques, and maize and
blue memorabilia.
The coach has his own bobble-
head. So do a few of his players: a
Brendan Morrison, a Marty Turco.
There's the two national champi-
onship trophies, as well as a host
of others. My eyes scan across the
room and down the walnut shelv-
ing. It's hard not to as light pours
in from the bay window, catching
every hint of gold in the room.
I think of how many people have
walked into this room and sat where
I was, asking for the coach's wis-
dom.
It's hard not to listenuto him when
he talks. My attention frequently
sharpens with antici-
pation which builds
each time Berenson
pauses. "He's just think-
ing about so many things
at once," junior Louie Capo-
russo jokes to me, "His
brain has so much
knowledge to pro-
cess."
Capo-
russo tells
me later
about the
first time he
met Berenson.
Fourteen years
old, the Toronto
native had one
objective to make
the best first impres-
sion.
"The only thing I
was thinking was when I
shake his hand, I'm going
to shake it as hard as I could
to look as strong as possible."
"I shook his hand and he
says, 'You've got a strong hand-
shake. I like that.'"
Caporusso continues the story,
describing the aura that I can't help
but be consumed by as I sit across
from the coach, asa wealth of expe-
rience and adversity stares back at
me.
Gordon Berenson grew up on the
outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan
with a rink always right around the
corner. His uncle, a schoolteacher,
ensured he had the resources to
excel, and by the time young Gordon
was 11, he was already graduating
junior high school.
As he made his way through high
school, Gordon's hockey prospects
began to look more and more bright.
But his schoolwork interested
him too, and it wasn't until his
coach, Murray Armstrong, took the
head coachingjob atDenver Univer-
sity that he realized what he was in
for.
"There's only six teams (in the
NHL)," Armstrong told him at the
time. "You better grow up and get
an education, so you don't become a
hockey bum."
"So I
grew up with that
fear," the coach says. "I
don't want tobe a hockey bum.
I want toget an education."
The Montreal Canadiens, who
had drafted him out of high school,
assured him he would never be one.
Before Berenson even stepped
foot on Michigan's campus, where
he decided to play hockey, the Cana-
diens came calling. They told him
he was crazy to consider going to
college. He was throwing his career
away.
"Montreal was waiting," Beren-
son said. "They tried to bribe me,
pay me, and I said, 'No, I'm going to
school."'
The Canadiens would not be
deterred. They wined him. They
dined him. They even devised an
elaborate plan involving Beren-
son going to McGill University's
engineering school while playing a
70-game, NHL season.
But when the dean of the engi-
neering school at McGill told him it
was impossible and advised him to
go back to Ann Arbor, he knew the
Canadiens would have to wait. They
did, and soon after, he became the
first college hockey player to bridge
the gap
to the NHL.
Berenson told
this story to Caporusso
- like he has to many players
before him - as they sat together
in a Seattle airport, waiting for the
second leg of their return flight from
Alaska this season.
And while Berenson spoke, Capo-
russo began to understand the aura
that surrounds his coach.
"He went against the grain, and I
think that's why he's become such a
special figure in hockey," Caporusso
says. "I love that about him because
he knows exactly what he wants.
For anyone else, it would've been a
no-brainer. Ninety-nine-point-nine
percent of people would have taken
it, but he didn't, that's what's so
great about him."
Two years had passed for Chris
Fox, and in his sophomore season,
he still wasn't quite sure why he was
here.
With the pressure of blue-chip
status bearing down on him, Fox
had yet to make a big impact in Ann
Arbor. All of the reasons why he
came to Michigan: the hockey pro-
gram, the coach, the education - he
begins to question what each one of
them truly means to him.
But academically, Fox began to
see a future shaping up for him in
See BERENSON. Page 4B
- FLPHOTO/Oa:Iy
Michigan coach Red Berenson, who was an All-American forward at Michigan in 1961 &1962, now has 699 career coaching wins.
s,
Blue takes second-, advances to NCAAs
By STEPHEN J. NESBITT
Daily Sports Writer
The No. 6 Miihigan women's
gymnastics team did just enough
to survive at the NCAA Southeast
Regional Championships on Sat-
urday, but securing a second-place
finish came at a steep price.
Both of the top two scores for the
meet qualified for the NCAA finals.
The Wolverines finished with a
score of 195.800 - well behind No.
6 Stanford's mark of 196.775.
Just one year removed from
being bumped out of a spot in the
NCAA Championships by the Car-
dinals, Michigan got a chance at
revenge, but came up short.
At the NCAA Regional Finals
on April 4, 2009, the team's third-
place finish behind Stanford and
then-top-ranked Arkansas disal-
lowed them from advancing to the
championship - marking the pro-
gram's first absence at the nation's
top stage in 17 years.
But as the Wolverines (10-1 Big
Ten, 19-3 overall) headed to Mor-
gantown, W. Va. last weekend for
their regional six-team matchup,
they expected a rosier outcome.
The balance beam once again
proved tobe the team's bane.
Heading into the final rotation
on the beam, Michigan was neck-
and-neck with Stanford. In run-
away fashion the two teams had
created an almost insurmountable
lead over the rest of the field.
But the Wolverines posted a
meet-low 47.975 on the beam,
caused by three separate falls, and
the event that catapulted the team
among the best in the nation almost
left them empty-handed.
"It's the kiss of death when we
go into the last event thinking that
we literally just have to stay on the
beam," Michigan coach Bev Plocki
said. "I think we're actually better
under pressure situations like the
Big Ten Championships when we
had to stick to beat Penn State. I
think that when all you have to do
is stay on, that's the hardest thing
to do."
With such a large lead before hit-
ting the beam, only a catastrophic
finish would have allowed another
team back into the competition,
and that is exactly what happened,
as Southern Utah inched to less
than half a point behind Michigan.
Unfortunate news came for the
Wolverines when freshman Katie
Zurales, one of the team's top per-
formers during the second half of
the season, dislocated her shoulder
while finishing up her beam rou-
tine.
"She had a prettygoodbeam rou-
tine going," Plocki said, explaining
the injury. "You throw your arms
in the air to initiate the twist, and
when she threw her arm back, her
shoulder dislocated, so she kind of
quit in the middle of the skill and
ended up landing on her side. So the
injury didn't happen on the fall, it
was on her take-off from the beam."
After watching Zurales's injury,
two of the last three performers
also tumbled from thebeam.
"It's kind of hard to recollect
yourselves when a teammate goes
down, so that was unfortunate for
us," junior Kylee Botterman said.
"We didn't recover how we should
have."
According to Plocki, the severity
of the injury is still unknown, but
the team is searching to fill her spot
in the beam and vault lineups for
safety's sake.
Despite the drama surround-
ing the beam, the meet did feature
some outstanding performances
See NCAA REGIONALS, Page 3B
Senior captain Jordan Sexton scored a career high on the uneven bars, which has been a weak event for Michigan
The Wolverines beat the Boilermakers on Michigan junior pitcher Jordan Taylor
Saturday and Sunday behind LaMarre and tossed a perfect game and Nikki Nemitz
Burgoon after falling in a disappointing followed with a shutout in the Wolverines'
performance Friday night. Page 3B weekend sweep. Page 3B