Chase Winovich doesn’t 

forget things easily. 

He still remembers the 

Ohio State fan who “shot 
the double bird” at him last 
year. He still remembers his 
omission from the Under 
Armour All-America Game. 
He still remembers the scout 
team, the position change 
and every other slight, in 
part, because all of that has 
made him who he is.

Perhaps 
it’s 
those 

recollections that draw his 
teammates to say the redshirt 
junior has a few screws loose, 
that he’s different. Frankly, 
they’re not entirely wrong. 
Winovich himself will admit 
that he’s “just that right 
amount of crazy.”

Ask 
him 
about 
Conor 

McGregor. He’ll say he would 
love to just “be boys with 
him.”

Ask him about how he 

approaches each day. He’ll 
compare himself to a lion 
needing to be faster than 
gazelles.

Ask 
him 
about 
this 

team’s 
identity. 
He’ll 

reference a Steven Spielberg 
documentary 
to 
make 

the point that Michigan, 
regardless of its youth, can 
defy expectations.

But the path he has taken 

to become the Wolverines’ 
starting 
defensive 
end 

required craziness, obsession 
or whatever you want to call 
it.

So let’s do away with the 

illusion of normalcy. Chase 
Winovich is different.

He is crazy.

***

It surfaced at his 10th 

birthday party.

Winovich was hosting a 

double-elimination checkers 
tournament at his house, 
eventually matching up with 

his friend, David Stover.

There were no seeds, but 

if there were, Stover would 
have 
been 
up 
there. 
As 

Winovich says, Stover was 
a bright kid 
that was in 
the 
gifted 

program. 
Winovich 
lost 
and 

promptly 
ran upstairs, 
crying, 
pleading for 
his 
dad 
to 

beat 
David 

in the next 
round. Even 
then, losing 
was a shock 
to his pride.

“I was like, ‘You have to 

beat him so that I can play him 
again in the loser’s bracket,’ 
” Winovich recalls. “In my 
head I’m thinking like, ‘How 
can I win?’ And I thought to 
myself, ‘Beating him twice in 

the championship will be a 
tough task, but I know if I can 
get him in the loser’s bracket, 
where I’m at, I can beat him 
again.’ ”

Sure enough, 

that’s 
exactly 

what happened.

Winovich’s 

dad 
beat 

David. 
Then 

Winovich beat 
him 
himself, 

jumpstarting 
a 
run 
to 
a 

10-year-old 
checkers 
tournament 
title.

Winovich 

admits 
that, 

for Stover, the 

experience 
was 
“probably 

just irrelevant.”

But not for Winovich. He 

calls his competitiveness a 
curse and a gift. Asked for 
an example of such away 
from a football stadium, the 

checkers tournament is the 
first thing that comes to 
mind.

“When you hate to lose and 

you want to win that much, it 
creates anxiety in a sense,” 
Winovich says. “It’s like, you 
want it more than anything 
you’ve ever wanted in every 
situation.”

And there’s a lot that 

Winovich wanted.

***

For what it’s worth, Bill 

Cherpak doesn’t think Chase 
Winovich is crazy.

But Cherpak knows his 

do-it-all 
standout 
doesn’t 

care what anybody thinks of 
him. As Winovich’s former 
coach at Thomas Jefferson 
High School in Jefferson 
Hills, Pa., he saw that every 
day.

As 
a 
junior, 
Winovich 

would 
ruin 
offensive 

practices on the scout team 
defense. As a senior, he asked 
to be on the kickoff team.

He saw it off the field too 

— in a dance contest of all 
places.

In December of his senior 

year, Winovich participated 
in Thomas Jefferson’s fifth 
annual “Dancing With the 
Athletes” — an event in which 
all proceeds were donated to 
the Four Diamonds Fund, 
a nonprofit that supports 
families with children who 
have cancer.

As 
Cherpak 
recalls, 

Winovich was “busting his 
ass” with his partner to 
prepare for a disco rendition 
“like Saturday Night Fever.”

The work paid off. To 

Cherpak’s best recollection, 
Winovich won.

It was just a few months 

prior that he won a different 
type of battle, too.

Winovich’s older brother 

played quarterback, and he 
idolized him. So, as Cherpak 
recalls, 
Winovich 
always 

wanted a shot to line up 
under center.

“And we’re like, ‘Listen, 

you’re not a quarterback. 
You’re actually horrible at 
it.’ ”

Qualified or not, Winovich 

was eventually granted his 
wish, despite mechanics that 
left something to be desired.

“He 
thought 
he 
could 

throw,” Cherpak said. “He 
really wasn’t that good. He 
thought he could. It would 
seriously 
be 
the 
ugliest 

form.”

When all was said and 

done, 
though, 
Winovich’s 

mechanics 
didn’t 
really 

matter. Entering his senior 
year at Thomas Jefferson, 
Winovich split snaps under 
center. Then he won the 
starting job.

There 
were 
games 
in 

which he’d carry the ball 
25 times, and throw once or 
twice. Form aside, Winovich 
was a leader, and he got the 
job done.

“That was him,” Cherpak 

said. “He would, like, will 
himself to do it even though 
he wasn’t skilled at being a 
quarterback. ... He just made 
plays. He just got it done. 
Whatever he had to do, he 
was finding a way to get it 

FootballSaturday, November 25, 2017
4C

The madness that made Winovich

KEVIN SANTO

Managing Sports Editor

People call Chase Winovich crazy. They say he has screws loose. And frankly, he doesn’t care.

EVAN AARON/Daily

Redshirt junior defensive end Chase Winovich spent two years trying to carve out his role with the Wolverines, but eventually he found his home as Michigan’s starting defensive end.

When you hate 

to lose and 
want to win 
that much, it 

creates anxiety 

in a sense.

