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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

