8A — Tuesday, March 21, 2018
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

For Blanco, life has led to this moment

Seventh inning. Bases loaded. 

Two outs. A national championship 
on the line.

Tera Blanco and the Firecrackers 

— a travel team coached by her dad, 
Jeff — were playing for the U-16 
national title. Blanco, then a high 
school freshman, had pitched a 
nine-inning complete game the day 
before to send her team to the finals.

Blanco was the best pitcher on 

the team, but it was another girl’s 
turn to start. Instead, she was the 
designated player. But Jeff told his 
daughter to be ready. If trouble 
struck, they would need her.

“She’d come in from the bullpen,” 

Jeff said. “She’d be in the other 
end of the dugout and she’d just be 
throwing the ball into her glove, 
popping the glove really hard, just 
kind of staying loose.

“But it also kind of looked like 

letting me know, ‘Hey, I’m ready. 
Anytime you need me, I’m ready to 
go in.’ ”

And indeed, he needed her. The 

bases were juiced in the bottom 
of the seventh and suddenly, the 
game — and the glory — hung in the 
balance.

The time had come. Blanco stood 

in the circle, fired and got the final 
out like there was nothing to it.

The Firecrackers were national 

champions.

It was par for the course for a 

player seemingly born ready for the 
moment. And when that moment 
came, one thing was certain — she 
would savor every bit of it.

***
You won’t find a lot of Michigan 

fans in Huntington Beach, Calif., 
but the Blancos were an exception. 
Jeff’s 
grandfather 
was 
from 

Michigan and raised him a die-hard 
fan, so it was only natural that his 
daughters also grew up cheering for 
the Wolverines. Blanco would wake 
up early Saturday mornings and 
turn on the football games — that is, 
when she didn’t have softball.

The Blancos caught the softball 

bug early. Kayla — born in 1993 
— began playing first, and Tera — 
born in 1996 — decided she wanted 
to play too. By the age of four, she 
was playing t-ball and by five she 
had started softball. By six, she was 
taking pitching lessons.

“She was always trying to stay 

on pace with her older sister,” 
Jeff said. “ … She was always very 
competitive.”

And for Jeff — who got into 

coaching because he wanted to be 
involved with his daughters’ softball 
careers — the natural next step was 
to introduce his girls to Michigan 
softball. Luckily, the Wolverines 
played annually in the Judi Garman 
Classic, a tournament in nearby 
Fullerton, Calif. Jeff took them to 
watch every year.

In 2005, when Blanco was nine, 

she watched as the team she had 
started to love became the first from 
a cold-weather climate to ever win 
the Women’s College World Series.

***
It wasn’t long before Blanco had 

the opportunity to keep pace with 
her sister. Sometimes, Kayla’s travel 
team would be missing a player, so 
Jeff turned to his other daughter to 
fill in. It didn’t matter that she was 
three years younger.

After all, competition had always 

fueled Blanco, and this was no 
exception. Had she not been so 
tiny, no one would have known 
anything was out of the ordinary. 
But that’s the thing. She was small, 
so everyone knew. And that made 
her all the more impressive.

During one game, Blanco stood 

in left field as a high fly ball carried 
towards the corner. She tracked the 
ball, laid out and made the diving 
catch like there was nothing to it.

The umpire took off his mask and 

applauded.

It wasn’t a surprise that the 

teams Blanco played on had so much 
success — not just because of her 
talent at both pitching and hitting, 
but because she was a natural leader, 
even then.

The accolades racked up. The 

national championship with the 
Firecrackers. A national runner-up 
the following year. Back-to-back 
league championships at Marina 
High School.

“The kids looked up to her from 

minute one,” said Michelle Spencer, 
a former assistant coach at Marina. 
“She really was the person that 
everyone on the field looked up to. 
And that’s hard sometimes, as a kid, 

to deal with that. But she handled it 
so well.”

Lots of colleges would have 

clamored for a player like Blanco, 
as she was one of the top two-way 
players in the country.

But she was set on Michigan.
That’s the irony of it. This was 

California, a state home to several 
powerhouse programs — in fact, at 
least one school from the state has 
advanced to the Women’s College 
World Series all but four years that 
Blanco has been alive. But those 
schools couldn’t have her.

“She walked into us as a freshman 

and said, ‘I’m going to Michigan,’ ” 
Spencer said. “ … She was dead set 
on Michigan from the moment I 
met her.”

The adamancy makes sense. 

Blanco, after all, had seen the team 
ascend to the highest levels. She 
had autographs from her favorite 
Wolverines and a picture with 
Michigan coach Carol Hutchins and 
former star right-hander Jordan 
Taylor hanging at home. One of her 
coaches had even alerted Hutchins 
to her existence.

“He contacted us and said, ‘We’ve 

got this kid and she always wears 
Michigan stuff, and you should look 
at her because she’s pretty good,’ ” 
Hutchins said.

Hutchins’ 
own 
evaluation 

confirmed the recommendation. 
She wanted Blanco primarily as a 
pitcher, albeit one that would also 
hit. Blanco insisted she wanted to 
play shortstop when she wasn’t in 
the circle.

Eventually, she relented — first 

base would be her position when she 
wasn’t pitching — but it only further 
proved what Hutchins already 
knew: Blanco was a competitor, 
exactly the kind of player she was 
looking for.

Blanco got her offer freshman 

year. She remains one of the 
youngest players Hutchins has 
ever recruited. But before she 
committed, Jeff insisted that Blanco 
visit campus in the winter, when 
freezing temperatures and swirling 
snow would be in full force.

“My dad wanted to know 

if I could handle the cold and 
everything,” Blanco said. “ … I was 
able to handle it.”

She never had a doubt. 
That 
was 
Blanco, 
attacking 

every challenge handed to her — 
whether it was playing against 
girls three years older, securing a 
national championship or surviving 
the frozen tundra of a Michigan 
January. She joined the Wolverines 
knowing she wouldn’t necessarily 
be the main attraction. This was, 
after all, a team with three All-
Americans in outfielder Sierra 
Lawrence, 
right-hander 
Megan 

Betsa and second baseman Sierra 
Romero. But that didn’t deter her. 
Instead, she fed off the competition.

“The environment was super 

competitive, and I think that’s 
what made our team really 
great,” Blanco said. “And we 
had great leaders that pushed 
— I don’t even think they 
knew if they were leading 
or not — but just pushing the 
team with their athletic ability. 
… Just coming to the field and 
(thinking) ‘Oh, I gotta reach this 
standard that they’re at.’ ”

In part, she did just that. She 

immediately earned the starting 

first base job and ran with it, 
starting 64 of the Wolverines’ 68 
games there. But she wasn’t the 
two-way star who had dazzled 
coaches, parents and umpires alike, 
as an arm injury limited her to just 
five appearances in the circle.

“She really had taken some steps 

back,” Hutchins said. “We had to let 
her heal and then build her back. … 
And it took a couple years to get her 
back.”

It was frustrating for an athlete 

accustomed to being one of the best. 
But it added fuel to her fire.

Blanco’s sophomore year, she 

exploded as one of the top first 
basemen in the country. She 
finished the season in the top 25 
nationally in on-base percentage 
and garnered an All-America First 
Team nod, helping lead Michigan 
to a 52-7 record. On the mound, she 
still wasn’t quite the player she had 
been, but she began getting starts 
and putting it together.

She had always been a player who 

injected her personality into the 
game, and it shined through on the 
field and off it.

Blanco and then-catcher Lauren 

Connell both loved SpongeBob. So 
they gave her changeup a name: the 
leedle, after a scene where Patrick 
continuously 
yells 
the 
phrase 

“leedle leedle leedle lee.” It stuck, 
becoming a joke among the rest of 
the team.

“It’s kind of a weird changeup, 

so they call it a leedle,” said junior 
catcher Katie Alexander. “ … We 
actually got (pitching coach) Jen 
(Brundage) Patrick glasses one year 
for a coach’s gift.”

That’s Blanco, a player who finds 

success by letting loose. This is an 
athlete as fierce as she is fun-loving, 
as confident as she is relaxed. It’s a 
lethal combination.

“She’s more of like, the goofy first 

baseman,” said senior utility player 
Aidan Falk, who plays first base 
when Blanco is on the mound. “She 
brings a lot of personality to the 
field. And then, I love playing first 
base when she’s pitching because 
I just talk to her the whole time … 
she definitely has a more spunky 
(attitude).”

That 
attitude 

was the key to her 
breakout. 
She 

approached 
every at-bat 
with 
a 

swagger 
that struck 
fear 
into 

the 
hearts 

and 
minds 

of 
pitchers 

everywhere, and 
for good reason, 
given 
how 

often 
she 

practically launched the ball into 
orbit.

Sometimes, that swagger even 

intimidated her teammates.

“There’s a … couple of us on the 

team (who) when we were first 
freshmen (thought) ‘Wow, Tera, I 
didn’t think you liked me, like, when 
I met you,’” Alexander said. “ … You 
were just so scared because you 
thought she hated you.”

But they were wrong. Blanco 

is the player who brings the team 
into a huddle and checks to make 
sure everyone is having fun. She’s 
the player who jokes around with 
her teammates mid-game. She’s the 
player who named her changeup 
after a cartoon.

“A lot of our team is just, we get 

so caught up in the outcome,” said 
senior designated player Amanda 
Vargas. “ … She can help us, like, dial 
it back.”

In Michigan’s first game of the 

2016 Women’s College World Series, 
the game was scoreless through five 
innings. Blanco stepped to the plate 
with the bases loaded. Do or die 
time.

She smacked a double to right 

field. The Wolverines wound up 
winning, 2-0.

Perhaps she was already the 

player she had looked up to just the 
year before: leading not through 
conscious 
effort, 
but 
through 

her athletic feats and infectious 
enthusiasm for the game alike.

***
But the very competitiveness 

that makes Blanco great can also 
be her biggest downfall. She holds 
herself to such a high standard that 
sometimes even she can forget her 
fun-loving philosophy.

“Like any player, she can second-

guess herself, and it’s hard,” Jeff 
said. “ … Sometimes if things aren’t 
going perfect, she can get a little bit 
frustrated.”

And that was the story of her 

junior year.

In her first season as a full two-

way player, Blanco had a .460 
on-base percentage and a 2.30 
earned-run average. She was named 
to the All-Big Ten First Team and 

the 
All-Great 
Lakes 

Region First Team. 

It sounds like a 

success, but for 

Blanco, it was a 
slump.

She slugged 

just .475, 

nearly 

a 300-point 

drop from the 
year 
before. 

Her 
batting 

average and 
on-base 
percentage 
also 
plummeted. 
And 
her 

pitching 
stats, 
while 

good, 
belied 

her status as 
a 
can’t-miss 

prospect.

“I think that 

maybe 
why 
my 

stats and everything went down last 
year is I just probably wasn’t in the 
right mindset,” Blanco said at the 
beginning of the season. “ … I think 
that I was just thinking too much at 
the plate.”

But her dad knew her better than 

anyone. He knew she had bigger 
things in her. He knew her swagger 
was contagious. And he knew he 
had just the right medicine.

So he sent her video of the 

majestic home runs and ringing 
doubles of her sophomore year. It 
reminded her that she was still that 
girl.

***
Technically 
speaking, 
Jeff 

stopped being Blanco’s coach after 
her freshman year of high school, 
but in reality, he never stopped 
coaching her.

He made his way to as many 

games as he could. Not just the Judi 
Garman Classic, but games all over 
the country, from Ann Arbor to 
Boca Raton. Now that she’s a senior, 
he has plans to attend all but 10.

Jeff sends his daughter a text 

before every game letting her know 
he loves her, wishing her luck and 
offering motivation. He’ll be the 
first to acknowledge that he’s her 
number one fan.

And now, he coaches a new 

crop of young softball players, but 
he constantly thinks of Blanco. 
He peruses video of professional 
ballplayers 
and 
motivational 

speakers. He wonders if it might help 
one of his players. Then he wonders 
if it might help his daughter.

“If I see something in her game 

that maybe she’s not having success 
with or she might be struggling with 
or trying to get better at, and I see 
some video or piece of information, 
I’ll send that to her,” Jeff said. “ … 
Just, ‘Hey, take a look at this, see 
what you think, you know, might be 
enough to put you in the right frame 
of mind.’ ”

After her games, Blanco and 

Jeff often hang out and relax in 
the hotel. They talk about — what 
else? — softball. Then, they go out to 
dinner. Blanco loves sushi. Jeff’s not 
a fan of it, but he takes her anyway.

***
Blanco’s magnetic personality 

coupled with her unparalleled work 
ethic and her dad’s influence always 
created the perfect recipe for a 

leader. But now she has the final 

ingredient: Experience.

“She’s 
always 
been 

really confident in her 
game, but her confidence 

continually grows,” Falk 

said. “She’s definitely taken the 

role of kind of like, the caretaker for 
the younger girls. … She really is like, 
‘Hey, this is what you’re doing, this 
is what you’ve gotta do,’ and it’s good 
to have, like, another perspective as 
well as the coach’s.”

In the circle, the spotlight is off 

Blanco. Instead, it’s focused directly 
on freshman left-hander Meghan 
Beaubien, 
the 
young 
phenom 

heralded as the one to fill Betsa’s 
shoes. Blanco’s role is subtler.

With Betsa graduated, the role 

as the leader of the pitching staff 
is Blanco’s. Now more than ever, 
it’s a vital responsibility, since the 
other two pitchers — Beaubien and 
right-hander Sarah Schaefer — are 
freshmen. Blanco knows what it’s 
like to come to college and struggle 
before finding your place. She, 

herself, is evidence that it’s a lesson 
even the best of freshmen need to 
learn.

“She 
definitely 
gave 
(the 

freshmen), like, a perspective of 
what it was like freshman year,” 
Vargas said, “because you can either 
come in and you play scared and 
afraid because you don’t know what 
it’s gonna be like as a freshman, 
or, I’m positive she gave them the 
outlook of just come, give your 
best, and really just … go full force. 
There’s really nothing to lose at this 
point.”

Of course, Blanco is no slouch 

herself in the circle, sporting a 1.36 
ERA. And her experience playing 
both ways informs the advice she 
gives her teammates. She talks 
softball with the coaches, and 
sometimes they even go to her to 
help develop a game plan.

“Tera has some of the best 

softball IQ that I’ve ever had on my 
team,” Hutchins said. “Her softball 
savvy is up there with anybody’s. 
She just understands the game.”

And Blanco’s been through it all 

— the highs and the lows. She was 
always well-versed in the physical 
aspects of softball. Now she knows 
the mental ones, too.

“They go from being girls with 

potential to women with no limits,” 
Hutchins said. “And that’s her.”

***
On March 1, Blanco was back 

at the tournament she grew up 
attending. It was her last Judi 
Garman Classic as a player, the end 
of an era. Her family, of course, was 
there too.

Because it was spring break, the 

team had spent nine days together 
on the road, traveling from Texas to 
California. Before the tournament, 
many of the local players had gone 
home. Not Blanco. Instead, she took 
the rest of the team to Huntington 
Beach and served as their unofficial 
tour guide. After all, her teammates 
had become a second family.

In the first game against Loyola 

Marymount, the offensive woes 
that had plagued Michigan the 
whole season — and really, going 
back to last year — had returned in 
full force. Beaubien allowed a two-
run home run in the second inning. 
The Wolverines responded with a 
whimper.

But 
Blanco 
single-handedly 

changed the trajectory of the game 
and, with it, the tournament.

In the bottom of the fifth 

inning with a runner on third and 
Michigan trailing, 2-1, she dug in at 
the plate and ripped a single down 
the left field line. The game was tied.

Then, in the bottom of the 

seventh, she stepped up again 
with runners on first and second 
and the prospect of extra innings 
looming. She lofted a line drive into 
the right center gap to walk off the 
Wolverines.

Perhaps it was no coincidence 

that after the tournament, several 
players noted a difference that 
weekend: they were looser, freer, 
having more fun.

It was just one of many finite 

moments 
Blanco 
will 
now 

experience as her collegiate career 
comes to a close.

There comes a point in a college 

athlete’s career when everything 
turns into a last. Her last year 
becomes her last game becomes her 
last hurrah.

And for Blanco, it’s her last season 

of living her dream. Ever since she 
was the little left fielder making 
acrobatic catches, her dream was 
to play softball for Michigan. And 
now, with the clock running down, 
there’s no better time to put last year 
behind her and show the world who 
Tera Blanco really is.

“I wanna win everything that 

we can this year,” Blanco said. “ … I 
wanna be a Big Ten champ, Big Ten 
Tournament champ, and just keep 
winning.”

But the fact that Blanco’s dream 

has already come true doesn’t mean 
it’s all over. Just as most people 
dream multiple times per night 
before waking up and snapping 
back to reality, this season won’t be 
the end for Blanco and the game she 
loves.

“I definitely wanna stay within 

softball,” she said. “Maybe, like, give 
lessons, coach, that kinda stuff.”

Because that’s Blanco, who’s 

always led with her knowledge, 
her confidence, her personality. It 
seems only natural that coaching is 
the next step.

After all, for Blanco, it doesn’t 

matter what the question is. Softball 
is the answer.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Senior pitcher Tera Blanco is one of Michigan’s most experienced and productive players.

ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer

The senior always dreamed of playing for Michigan. Now, she enters the twilight of her career hoping to go out on top

