10 Thursday, May 22, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michiganclaily.com Thursday, May 22, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com PALMA 3 Softball travels to FSU The Big Ten proved us wrong ' ' ii i- )ope nssuper the Michigan softball team will Regional Thursday have to come down from its high and face a Florida State team that vs. Seminoles went 3-0in its own regional. The Wolverines (18-5 Big Ten, By KELLY HALL 46-13 overall) will hit the road to Daily Sports Writer Tallahassee, Fla., to face the Semi- noles in a best-of-three series that Fewer than 96 hours will have opens on Thursday evening. The passed since the biggest moment of matchup marks Michigan's third the Michigan softball team's season straight Super Regional and Flori- when the Wolverines open Super da State's second. Regional play at Florida " State. Though the Wolverines have After back-to-back home runs in plenty of weapons, including soph- the top of the seventh put Michigan omore shortstop Sierra Romero, ahead of No. 9 seed Arizona State, who leads the nation in batting senior center fielder Lyndsay Doyle average, and junior left-hander robbed a potential game-winning Haylie Wagner, who boasts a 1.62 homer that would've concluded earned run average and a 24-4 - Michigan's season. record, the Seminoles (24-3 ACC, It was the catch that was seen 53-6 overall) have two of their own all over the country - it topped NCAA Player of the Year candi- SportsCenter's Top 10 that night. dates. After Doyle's heroics, the Wol- Right-hander Lacey Waldrop verines erupted, while Michigan dominates Florida State's pitching coach Carol Hutchins mouthed corps with an ERA of 0.90 and a "Oh my god" with her eyes wide 36-4 record. open. Waldrop led the team past Ford- Rnt at - :n innrisl c -nra- nm ad a-,n i Vn e i l ,, Pal lahassee Regional. Friday, Waldrop retired the first eight Fordham bat- ters she saw and allowed just one to reach base in five innings. After shutting out the Bulls for 11 innings in the first half of a doubleheader Saturday, Waldrop allowed just seven hits over seven innings in the following game in order to advance to the Super Regionals. The other Seminole Player of the Year finalist is shortstop Maddie O'Brien. The redshirt junior sports a batting average of .441 to go along with 23 home runs and a nation- best 74 RBI. In order to combat O'Brien, senior outfielders Doyle and Nicole Sappingfield will have to play each game like it's their last - and it might be. Last weekend, though, they collectively scored nine runs and broke out of any sort of slump they could have been in before. Also breaking out of a small slump over the weekend was soph- omore left fielder Sierra Lawrence. In the second half of the double- header on Sunday, Lawrence hit two home runs - her first career multiple-homer game. After Wagner stood in the circle for 13.2 innings this past Sunday, it's likely that she'll receive the nod Thursday against a team that none of her teammates have played before. If every Wolverine shows up on Thursday like they did on Sun- day - except for Romero and Sap- pingfield, who were both ill on Sunday but still managed to put up runs - then Michigan will be in shape to play the No. 3 team in the nation. f two is company, and three is a crowd, MAX then a crowd BULTMAN of Big Ten teams will On Softball start NCAA Super Regionals this weekend. And if you had said that two months ago, we all would have said you were crazy. Sure, Michigan was a pre- season favorite to make the Wom- en's College World Series, but three Big Ten teams in the Super Regionals? No way. Yet, here we are, with Min- nesota, Nebraska and the Wolver- ines all gearing up for the softball equivalent of the Sweet 16. All year long we heard about how Michigan's biggest weakness was its schedule. How it wouldn't be ready to face the powerhouse Pac-12 and SEC teams come tour- nament time, and that every loss to a conference opponent was one more whack to the nail that was inevitably waiting in the Wolver- ines' coffin. And all season, we accepted that, even agreed with it, because outside of Ann Arbor, the Big Ten looked mediocre. Now, though, we have to eat our words, because the Big Ten proved us wrong last weekend - at least partially. No one will argue that the Big Ten is the Pac-12 or the SEC. Each of those conferences has four teams - all seeded - in the Super Regionals. To be fair, those losses to weak conference foes like Illinois and Purdue did hurt Michigan. The Wolverines, once ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation, entered the tournament unseeded, setting up a regional at No. 9 seed Arizona State. Facing hard-throwing Sun Devil right-hander Dallas Esc- obedo - a significant step up from the Big Ten's best in the cir- cle - conventional wisdom told us the Wolverines had a better than even chance of being elimi- nated in the regional final. Michigan had already dropped a game to the Arizona State earli- er in the double-elimination tour- nament and, with the Wolverines needing to win two straight against Escobedo to advance, that conventional wisdom appeared to be right. But then, even despite flu-like symptoms from its two best hitters, Michigan stole the first game, setting up a winner- take-all game. With sophomore shortstop Sierra Romero going O-for-4, and the score sitting 4-3 in favor of the Sun Devils with one out in the seventh inning, it looked like our mid-season guesswork would prove accurate after all. Then, sophomore outfielder Sierra Lawrence and senior designated player Taylor Hasselbach pound- ed back-to-back solo shots. Then, senior outfielder Lyndsay.Doyle robbed a walk-off home run. Then, suddenly, the Wolverines had won. No one saw it coming, but maybe someone should have. For the last four series of the regular season, the Wolverines dropped every opener. And each' time except one, they came back to sweep the rest of the series. This is a Michigan team that found itself trailing in every series it played since mid-April. That was the case because the Big Ten, even if not up to par with the SEC or Pac-12, had enough com- petition to at least challenge the Wolverines. So when Michigan needed to come back to oust Pac-12 foe Arizona State, it did so without breaking any more of a sweat than the Arizona heat warranted, because it was used to doing just that. Now the Big Ten has three teams in the Super Regionals, just one less than the power confer- ences, and it boasts the only two unseeded teams, Michigan and Nebraska. To get there, those three teams had to go a combined 6-3 against teams from the Pac-12 and SEC. Sure, Auburn, Missouri and Arizona State weren't neces- sarily the class of their respec- tive conferences, but they are all ranked in the top 20 nationally. In the next round, Minnesota and Nebraska will face Oregon and Alabama, the No.1 and No. 2 overall seeds from the Pac-12 and SEC, respectively. We can all agree the road probably ends here for both of them. Preview: Exhibit to mix arts and sciences Event aims to cancer's spread throughout the body is similar to that of natu- finance research ral cell regeneration - the only exception being that the cancer's lab for early-career genetic code doesn't have a signal to stop. Kahana said figuring out physicians where that stop signal comes from could open new avenues to restor- By PAULA FRIEDRICH ing damaged tissue in humans. Daily StaffReporter Kahana splits his time between his patients as an ophthalmic A fundraiser for the A. Alfred surgeon and his lab zebrafish as Taubman Medical Research Insti- a researcher. Zebrafish regularly tute hopes to tease out the con- regenerate complex tissues and nection between the left and right offer a genetic blueprint that is brain. surprisingly similar to that of a Organizers for the "An Evening human. of Art and Science" event asked It was that similarity that stuck eleven artists to create an art out to DeSousa as she toured the piece inspired by one of the Taub- lab -' walls of bubbling tanks man scholar's research. A ticketed filled with the tiny fish, some with gala event at the Museum of Con- transparent skin that reveal even temporary Art Detroit will display tinier beating hearts. the work Thursday evening. The DeSousa said her art usually art will then be put on auction to starts with an unformed feel- support the Taubman Emerging ing that eventually coalesces into Scholars program. a concept she mulis over before The program funds the cre- she begins sketching. She said ation of a laboratory to aid early- after visiting Kahana's lab she career physicians who want to was struck by the depth of the take on research endeavors. Assis- research. For her, "art is a point of tant Medical Prof. Alon Kahana, entry into the human possibility," who is currently one of the cen- and scientific research is a similar ter's emerging scholars, said help investigation into the unknown. like this is essential for medical "Pure research and fine art are researchers as funding for public- very similar in that way because sector grants continue to shrink. there is no immediate expecta- Artists and physicians were tion, or function yet," DeSousa paired earlier in the year to dis- said. "It's like this real space, this cuss the intersection of their work. real exploration." Kahana was paired with Detroit- She said her final piece cen- based artist Simone DeSousa. He ters where everything connects- said their collaboration started zebrafish and humans, art and after DeSousa visited his labora- science-before more of the layers tory at the top of the Kellogg Eye of life are peeled back. Center. "This whole program, it's kind Kahana's research interest lies of bringing two things that are in the ambiguous space between usually seen as opposites and cell regeneration and cancerous showing their common ground," growth. The mechanism behind she said. LSA senior Audrey Sharpe tutors English through the Palma Program at the Ann Arbor District Library Tuesday. CURRENTS From Page 1 Rip Current Awareness Week, which begins June 1. Elizabeth LaPorte, an investi- gator who has been working with the team of researchers for the last eight years, said the project was initiated after it was determined just how dangerous the Great Lakes were for swimmers. Among all states, Michigan accounted for half of swimmer fatalities and the data suggested that such occur- rences were becoming more com- mon each year. "Previously, folks didn'trealize that there were dangerous cur- rents in the Great Lakes," LaPorte said. Unlike ocean beaches, a large number of Michigan beaches do not have professional lifeguards on duty, even during peak summer months. LaPorte said she did not understand this decision because it puts less experienced swimmers in serious danger. "It's interesting that we have lifeguards at the pools, but we don't along the Great Lakes," she said. "The fact is that swimmers in the Great Lakes are at a huge dis- advantage than swimmers would be in Florida or other areas, but that doesn't mean people aren't dying from rip currents in other areas." She said the increase in fatali- ties and rescues is largely unex- plained at this point, but said there are several current theories. "The low water levels might be a factor ... but there are also more people swimming for a longer period of time during the swim season," she said. Though the project highlights the effects of rip currents, which tend to pull swimmers away the shore into deeper water, LaPorte said the study covered several dif- ferent types of currents, several of which are relatively unknown to the public. One such type of cur- rent, known as a structural cur- rent, can form as water flows near a pier or breakwater, and presents. a serious - usually unidentified - hazard to swimmers. Young men are one of the high- est at-risk groups for drowning, according to LaPorte. She said drowning in this demographic usually occurs when individuals swim in dangerous areas affected by structural currents. "We are finding more and more young men are jumping off of these piers and breakwaters, and we want to warn them that it's probably the most unsafe place to be," LaPorte said. In addition to providing data to the public, Michigan Sea Grant will work to promote swimmer safety through the installation of "beach safety kits" at various loca- tions around the state. These kits will include a life-ring and throw- bag, both of which could poten- tially be used in a rescue attempt. LaPorte said families traveling to beaches this summer can stay safe by following simple safety guidelines, such as checking the weather report ahead of time and obeying all posted warnings and advisories. Many beaches in the state use a colored-flag warn- ing system to indicate the level of danger on a given day. Yellow flags indicate a rip current may be present, while red flags indicate there are active rip currents in the area and swimmers should avoid entering the water. While colder water tempera- tures may keep some beachgoers on the shore this Memorial Day weekend, the approaching sum- mer weather will likely bring warmer water temperatures, which could linger as late as Octo- ber. LaPorte said it's important all beachgoers exercise caution whenever they venture into the water, given that swimmers in trouble may not be able to attract attention or call for help. "It's really important to pay attention to what's going on around you,"-she said. "Drowning is a really silent event." Carol Hutchins' team continues its postseason run this weekend at Florida State. $1 Offf Any Smoothie Limit One offer per customer with coupon. -- Cannot be combined with any other offer Valid at Barry Bagels Ann Arbor location ONLY BAGELS I Barry Bagels Westgate Shopping CenterI 2515 Jackson Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (734) 662-2435 www.barrybagels.com Expires: May 29,2014J BUDGET From Page 2 Anglin and Kailasapathy all voted against the amendment, but it was ultimately passed. While three of the candidates in the upcoming mayoral election - Petersen, Briere and Taylor - spon- sored at least one amendment to the city administrator's proposed budget, Kunselman did not. He warned against the "unin- tended consequences of overex- tending" within the city budget and said they are why he chose not to "tinker" with the proposed bud- get. Follow the Daily on Twitter @MichiganDaily