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Thursday, May 11, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTS
Cold tubs, strikeouts and ‘Zen Golf’: The legacy of Megan Betsa
By MAX MARCOVITCH
Daily Sports Writer
Megan Betsa sat in a cold tub.
The television above her showed the
game she had just exited.
Top 7: Missouri: 4, Michigan: 1
Her back ached from the worst
pain she’d ever had from playing
softball.
Her body felt the wear and tear of
throwing 213 pitches in less than a
24-hour span and from pitching just
about every inning all postseason.
But none of that concerned her
then — her focus lay squarely on
finding a way to get the Wolverines
past their Super Regional matchup
against the 5th-ranked Tigers to
return to the Women’s College World
Series. With her team down 4-1 in
the seventh inning, she needed to get
ready for an impending win-or-go-
home third game later that day.
“I said, ‘Go get in the cold tub now,
get ready for game two (of the day).
Get mentally ready because we can
still win this thing,’ ” said Michigan
coach Carol Hutchins. “You can’t be
like ‘Oh, crap.’ We can still win it. So
off she went.
“I said, ‘I’m only gonna put you
(back in) if we get in the game.’ ”
Focused on heeding her coach’s
advice, Betsa kept a watchful eye on
the television just in case.
“And we scored one run.”
With the bases loaded, senior sec-
ond baseman Sierra Romero knocks
a sacrifice fly to deep right-center-
field, scoring senior outfielder Mary
Sbonek. 4-2.
“And then we scored another
run.”
Junior outfielder Kelly Christner
ropes a line drive past the diving Tiger
first baseman, scoring junior shortstop
Abby Ramirez. 4-3.
“And then we scored another run,
and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ ”
Senior outfielder Kelsey Susalla
lines a single into centerfield, scor-
ing senior outfielder Sierra Lawrence
from third. 4-4.
“And then we scored the fourth
run, so I jumped out (of the cold tub).”
A darting Christner scores on a
passed ball. 5-4, Michigan leads.
As quickly as Christner raced
home to take the lead, Betsa left the
tub, put on her dirty socks and was
back in the dugout to potentially close
out the Super Regional in front of the
Michigan faithful in Ann Arbor. She
didn’t feel the back pain — or so she
claims — nor the stress on her arm.
She was going to win this game.
Unless Hutchins didn’t let her.
Hutchins and her staff gave senior
right-hander Sara Driesenga the ball
to open the bottom of the seventh
inning. They left their ace on the
bench to defrost; all she could do was
watch.
The move was clearly a precau-
tion for the ailing Betsa. If Missouri
tied it up, Betsa would likely have
to pitch into extra innings, with no
guarantee of a win. If the Tigers
took the lead and won the game, she
would have to pitch seven innings or
more just hours later. But Hutchins
would all but admit later that not
putting Betsa in at that moment was
a mistake, especially as she watched
Driesenga hit the first batter of the
inning in the knee.
“I walked out there and I had to
gauge whether Sara was nervous,
or whether I should go with her,”
Hutchins said. “I walked back in
the dugout and I thought, for about
a half a second, ‘We’re going to win
this game. We’re going to put Betsa
in.’ Because who’s the most confident
kid? And who has the biggest heart?
“I knew that Megan was going to
win the game.”
***
Michigan assistant coach Bon-
nie Tholl still remembers the return
flight to Ann Arbor from Georgia.
She recalls with horror the bumps
that she insists nearly led to the
plane’s downfall.
She also remembers the kid who
was the reason Tholl had traveled
to rural Georgia on only one day’s
notice in the first place. The young
right-hander had the type of natu-
ral spin and ability to miss bats that
Tholl, Hutchins and assistant coach
Jennifer Brundage coveted — but
rarely found — in high school pitch-
ers.
“I actually thought my plane was
going to crash,” Tholl said. “And I
thought ‘This kid is going to commit
to Michigan, have an outstanding
career and I’m not going to see one
inning of it.’ I actually thought that
on the airplane.”
That kid was Megan Betsa. A kid
from rural Georgia who had a rise-
ball like they’d never seen, and the
fiery mentality of a bonafide ace. A
kid who left Georgia as one of the
most decorated players in state histo-
ry. A kid who will leave Michigan as
one of the most accomplished players
in the program’s rich history.
Tholl has, according to Hutchins,
“a better recruiting mind than any-
body in the country.” She scours
every publication and website out
there, searching around the country
for the potential next crop of Michi-
gan players. And ironically enough,
in the case of Betsa, Tholl originally
intended to scout a different player
from the area.
A day later, Tholl was in Betsa’s
hometown of McDonough, Ga. — a
small town 30 miles southeast of
Atlanta — scouting Betsa at her high
school games.
Betsa would go on to finish her
career at Union Grove High School
as a four-time all-state selection,
two-time Georgia state player and
pitcher of the year award winner and
a state champion her senior year.
Tholl has recruited hundreds
of kids — some successfully, some
unsuccessfully — in her 24 years
at Michigan, and she remem-
bers just about every single one
of them, their year of graduation,
their playing style and even their
birthdays.
So when she saw Betsa pitch for
that first time, she knew Betsa was
unique. She knew that type of spin
and strikeout ability wasn’t some-
thing commonly found in high
school pitchers. Even as her plane
was seemingly plummeting to the
Earth, Tholl knew she wanted
Betsa at Michigan.
Betsa, on the other hand, didn’t
even know where Michigan was,
much less harbor any deep-seated
desire to play for the Wolverines.
On her first visit to Ann Arbor
to meet the team and coaching
staff, Betsa asked the coaching
staff for book recommendations
to enhance the mental aspect of
her game and help keep her emo-
tions in check on the mound. They
recommended “Zen Golf” and
another book that “had to do with
numbers,” Betsa recalled.
She was still a few years from
stepping foot on campus as a
student-athlete, but Betsa had
already begun to display what the
Michigan coaching staff unani-
mously deemed the best work
ethic they’ve ever worked with.
“I just remember my very first
visit, I hung out with the team, we
went and got Pizza Bob’s shakes,
kinda did everything that you do
in Ann Arbor,” Betsa said. “I fell
in love. Instantly I knew this was
the place for me. … I wanted to
be apart of something that had a
really good culture, really big tra-
dition, and that’s exactly what this
place was.”
She was a kid from rural Geor-
gia in Ann Arbor in the middle of
January.
Against all odds, it was love at
first sight.
***
It was December of her senior
year, and Megan Betsa was ready to
be unchained.
Gone were Sierra Romero, Sierra
Lawrence, Haylie Wagner and the
legends who had come before her.
This was her team now.
She hadn’t thrown a pitch since
she gritted through six innings of
one-run ball against No. 7 Florida
State in the Women’s College World
Series, back pain and all, only to fall
1-0.
She has never, and will never,
use her back as the excuse — but
Betsa (and Hutchins) knew that she
couldn’t go through another post-
season at a self-proclaimed “80 per-
cent” like she had the season before.
She now carried the weight of the
Wolverines’ season on her right
arm. They had to ensure she would
be fully healthy for the wealth of
innings she would inevitably throw
this year — but more importantly, she
had to be healthy for the postseason.
There was only one way to do that.
So Betsa took the entire fall sea-
son off, not throwing a single pitch
from June until December, mentor-
ing junior right-hander Tera Blanco
and sophomore right-hander Leah
Crockett in the process.
“We needed her to be ready for
this part of the year. That’s the only
way we could almost guarantee it,”
Hutchins said at the beginning of the
season. “She is one driven kid, you
gotta hold the reins on her.”
Those reins, as it turned out, were
only confined to pitching. Instead
of resting on her laurels, the pitcher
who had already compiled 546.1
career innings pitched, 789 strike-
outs and a 1.92 earned-run average
asked a simple question few with her
pedigree would dare to posit: How
can I get better?
So she went to work, doing every-
thing she could short of throwing
a softball. She worked to refine her
spin, despite her natural ability that
Brundage calls “the best spin of any
pitcher Michigan has ever had.”
She also worked to include two
more pitches — a curveball and
drop-ball — more often in her pitch-
ing repetoire. Doing so, she hoped,
would counteract teams that tried
to gameplan for just the riseball/
changeup mix that she had tradition-
ally used.
The work paid off: Betsa’s unpre-
dictability has baffled opposing
batters, with teams less capable of
game-planning for the riseball alone.
This season, Betsa has compiled 91
strikeouts looking — tops in the Big
Ten by 51 — because of her ability to
mix all four pitches.
With Michigan set to kick off its
postseason run Friday afternoon,
Betsa’s health remains as strong as
it’s been in years. And in Betsa’s case,
being healthy bred confidence — per-
haps a confidence level she never
knew she could reach.
***
At some point in the next four
weeks, Megan Betsa will throw her
final collegiate pitch.
When she does, Betsa will finish
with 100+ career wins, 750+ innings,
1100+ strikeouts and an ERA well
below two. She will finish with three
unanimous first team All-Big Ten
selections and, more importantly
from her perspective, vie for a third
straight appearance in the Women’s
College World Series in the coming
weeks. And with 82 more strikeouts,
Betsa would pass Jennie Ritter for
the most strikeouts in a season from
a Michigan pitcher.
These are all statistics that will
immediately cement Betsa in the
pantheon of great Michigan softball
pitchers in recent decades.
Jennie Ritter. Jordan Taylor. Sara
Griffin. Haylie Wagner. Kelly Kovach.
Megan Betsa.
But right now, as the May sun
shines
into
the
state-of-the-art
Michigan softball facility, a smiling
Megan Betsa isn’t focused on records
she could gain or players she could
surpass on some hypothetical list.
You can’t go five minutes with-
out somebody asking her about her
health (The answer? “I feel really
good right now.”), but that doesn’t
faze her either.
She knows last year’s team might
have won the national championship
with her at full health, and, at the risk
of stating the obvious, she desperate-
ly wants that chance again.
Four years of working hard, mas-
sages after games, constant injury
treatment, game-planning with the
coaching staff, motivational books,
persistent work on her already-elite
spin, Pizza Bob’s milkshakes, expan-
sion of her pitching arsenal, near
plane crashes and cold tubs have led
to this moment.
Megan Betsa’s legacy is written
into Michigan lore.
But there’s still one chapter left.
Read the full feature online at
MichiganDaily.com
SOFTBALL