2B — March 11, 2019
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

I

n observance of Women’s
History Month, The Daily’s
sports section kicks off its
second annual series aimed at
telling the
stories of
female ath-
letes, coaches
and teams at
the University
from the per-
spective of the
female sports
writers on
staff. Former
managing
sports editor
Laney Byler starts the series
with this column.
I called Nicole Auerbach
on Friday morning, ready to
talk about the numbers behind
women in sports journalism.
I wanted to talk about her
experiences, her role covering
national college football for
The Athletic and how much
importance she placed in
women setting up other women
for success in a field dominated
by men.
At some point, the conversa-
tion landed on an internship
she did the summer after her
freshman year of college. It
was 2008, and Auerbach got an
internship with
The Trentonian
in New Jersey.
She’d spend the
summer cover-
ing the Yankees’
AA team, the
Trenton Thun-
der, and jump
into her career
as a sports-
writer.
When she
was younger, she’d read Sports
Illustrated cover-to-cover. She
loved writing, and she loved
sports, but she didn’t know
where to start — until she
found The Daily. She ended up
covering sports ranging from
club ultimate frisbee to wom-

en’s gymnastics. For someone
who thought that reporting
sports would be an ideal job,
that internship with The Tren-
tonian had potential to really
assist her in becoming a sports
journalist.
Then she found out she
was barred from entering the
Thunder’s locker room. In
2008.
Games ended around 10 p.m.,
and she’d have to wait outside
the locker room for players that
she asked for (or sometimes,
she wouldn’t get the oppor-
tunity to speak with players
at all). She realized she was
missing out on the raw answers
players gave immediately after
their games. Then she had to
race against deadline after
her interviews, hoping to get
her story in on time despite
not having the same access as
other people.
As far as obstacles go, not
being allowed to enter the
locker room was a pretty big
one.
“I brought it up to my edi-
tor — one thing I’ve always
been very fortunate to have
is editors that have really had
my back on this stuff — so my
editor made it happen,” she
told me on Fri-
day. “He called
them, and they
tried to tell him
that the rule
was because I
was an intern
and not a full-
time employee
at a newspaper
— not because
I was a woman.
And he said
‘That’s ridiculous. She’s on
deadline, she has a job to do,
and you need to let her in.’”
And then?
“And then they did.”
For women in sports jour-
nalism, barriers to entry can
range from being barred from

a locker room to facing a lack
of female role models in higher
positions. In a sphere his-
torically dominated by men,
Auerbach’s story
shows just how
far some women
have to reach to
level the playing
field.
Of course,
that playing
field was lev-
eled with a push
from her and her
editor. The next
summer, when
a baseball coach asked her,
“Did you understand every-
thing I said?” she received the
same amount of support from
her editors, who gave her the
choice to cover that team or
move on to a different one.
Having allies in the room —

male allies, specifically — was
one way to crunch that barrier.
“I think that every woman
in this field has stories like
that, where you
have to figure
out how you’re
going to navi-
gate something
and whether
or not you’re
going to tell
your bosses,”
Auerbach said.
“Because you
don’t want them
to think that
you’re not capable of handling
yourself in the field and in
these situations, but you also
want them to know so they
have your back, in exactly the
way my editors did in both of
those situations. Because they
100 percent went to bat for

me.”
Now Auerbach covers
national college football for
The Athletic, along with Chan-
tel Jennings —
both of whom are
alumni of The
Daily’s sports
staff. For them,
support networks
of women in the
industry have
been vital to han-
dling their role
as sports journal-
ists.
But these
examples preach the impor-
tance of having allies for
women in a world dominated
by barriers. While having net-
works for female support are
necessary, having support from
both men and women would
close the gap even further.

“Everyone deserves a spot
at the table,” Jennings said
on Saturday, “and if it’s only
women who are bringing
women to the
table, or if it’s
only people of
color who are
bring people
of color to the
table, we’re not
going to have
an accurate
representa-
tion. Or, it’s
just going to be
really, really
slow.
“It needs to be everyone.
Everyone has to look out for
everyone.”

Byler can be reached at

dbyler@umich.edu or on

Twitter @laneybyler

Step up to the plate

LANEY
BYLER

Minnesota Massacre

Michigan’s season ends at hands of Golden Gophers with Big Ten Tournament sweep punctuated by 4-1 Saturday blowout

MINNEAPOLIS — It was
over before it even started. Rem
Pitlick made sure of it.
With a goal to his name
already and up 3-0 with three
minutes left in the second
period, Minnesota’s star center
gathered a pass from Tyler
Sheehy in the right circle and
without hesitation knifed the
puck into the top of Michigan’s
net, ending whatever small
pulse the Wolverines’ season
clung to.
“They came out to play and
we didn’t,” said junior forward
Jake Slaker. “It showed on the
scoreboard.”
At times this season, the
Michigan hockey team looked
like the lethal, fast-skating team
that most pegged it to be coming
into the season.
Others moments weren’t as
rosy. The Wolverines would
often come out and win a
Friday game, and outshoot their
opponent on a Saturday, only to
be outdone by costly turnovers
in games they largely had a
chance to win.
Saturday’s
4-1
loss
to
Minnesota was neither. Call it
a season-ending loss or call it
a decisive nail
in the coffin to
a season once
rife with hope.
But either way,
by the time the
buzzer sounded,
Michigan
was
nothing
but
a
shadow
of
its
once-lofty
potential.
“They jumped
us,” said Michigan coach Mel
Pearson. “We weren’t ready to
play. That’s been an issue from
time to time this year. Other
games we’ve been able to claw
ourselves out of it. The last time
we were in here, we were down
three-zip and we had to claw
our way out of it. At this time of
year, when teams are desperate,
you can’t do that.”

Pearson always mentioned
the Wolverines’ fourth line as a
group that he was comfortable
matching up with any line in the
country. But just five minutes
into the game, the Golden
Gophers’ Tommy Novak burned
freshman forward Nolan Moyle
past the boards, letting the
127-game veteran waltz into
Michigan’s crease unguarded
and flip in Minnesota’s first goal
behind
freshman
goaltender
Strauss Mann.
Junior
forward
Will
Lockwood
responded
by
shaking
Minnesota
goaltender Mat
Robson
out
of his net but
missed a golden
opportunity
to
tie the game by
sending the puck wide of the left
post.
And after cutting down on
defensive zone turnovers, senior
defenseman
Joseph
Cecconi
mishandled a centering pass
into the hands of Scott Reedy.
Seven minutes after Minnesota
notched its first goal, Reedy
danced around every Wolverine
on the ice and doubled the

Golden Gophers’ lead.
Michigan’s
power
play
remained inconsistent, if not
dormant, as it had been for the
series and most of the season —
the Wolverines didn’t convert
either of their two tries in the
first two periods and leave
Minneapolis 0-6 with a man
advantage.
With an early exit after last
year’s run, Michigan has more
questions than answers on its
plate.
Will Quinn Hughes leave?
If he does, how will the
Wolverines replace him and
senior
defenseman
Joseph
Cecconi’s 53 points?
What
about
Josh
Norris
and his injury? Can this year’s
underclassmen step up and
provide more consistent offense?
Will next year’s recruiting class
get to campus and contribute?
“(We need) good recruiting,”
Pearson said. “We gotta hit the
recruiting hard. We’ve got some
good pieces, but we’re a ways
away from being the team we
need to be.”
“I think there’s a lot of
things that can change,” Slaker
added. “It’s just one of those
things where we get back to
work and work on ... just about
everything.”

MINNEAPOLIS
—
Seven
minutes
into
practice
on
Thursday afternoon, Michigan
coach Mel Pearson gathered his
team at center ice.
The Wolverines, a day away
from the first game of a best-
of-three Big Ten Tournament
series at Minnesota, lacked the
focus and attention to detail
Pearson wanted to see. After
a quick reminder, the effort
level improved, and Michigan
carried momentum into Friday
night’s game.
“They’ll
show
up
and
compete tomorrow,” Pearson
said on Thursday. “But it’s —
as a coach, you’ve watched the
tapes. You’ve seen the team, as
our staff has. We understand
how good Minnesota is. Players
just want to play. They don’t
watch all that. They don’t
understand, how — maybe at
times how good (a team is). You
can tell them that, but — we just
wanted to get their attention
today.”
Though
the
Wolverines
eventually lost in overtime,
Michigan
entered
the
first
period with energy and focus
and lit the lamp first on Friday

night. Pearson got his team’s
attention.
But
on
Saturday,
in
a
season-ending 4-1 loss, the
Wolverines started the game
about how they started practice
on Thursday. And this time,
Michigan wouldn’t be saved
by the fact that how it started
didn’t truly matter.
“I’m a firm believer (in) you
play as you practice, for the
most part,” Pearson said. “For
the most part. You just want to
make sure that you’re — we don’t
play tonight. Thank goodness
we didn’t play tonight, we’d be
down 5-0, first period. It just —
we’re sloppy.”
Saturday’s game mattered
more than any other game had
all season. The Wolverines were
60 minutes away from the end
of their season, but they didn’t
start the game like a team that
was so close to elimination.
While it wasn’t quite the
5-0 deficit Pearson mentioned
Thursday, Michigan was in a
deep hole and trailed, 3-0, after
the first period. The Wolverines
played better in the ensuing
40 minutes, particularly in
the second stanza. But by that
point, the hole was too deep.
“They came out ready to
play in the first and we were on
our heels,” said
junior
forward
Jake Slaker. “It’s
tough to go down
three
in
the
first period and
chase. I think
we did it last
time
we
were
here and we had
a
little
better
comeback
than
we did tonight
but, like I said, they came ready
and we didn’t. And at that point,
it was too late.”
Just as Pearson had warned
his team before the series
started, a slow start led to a
deep deficit.
Michigan started better in
the second period, outshooting
the Golden Gophers 10-6 in
the frame. The majority of

Minnesota’s shots came on the
power play late in the period
after the Wolverines had spent
the majority of the stanza
putting pressure on goaltender
Mat Robson.
“We
were
embarrassed,”
Pearson said. “We played with
a little bit more pride in the
second
period.
We
worked
hard.”
Despite Michigan’s efforts in
its best period of the game, none
of the shots were close enough.
None of the Wolverines’ scoring
chances were truly ‘Grade-A’
chances.
And
when
you’re
down 3-0 in a game that could
end your season, close isn’t
good enough.
“We’ve had trouble scoring
goals,”
Pearson
said
on
Saturday. “We really have all
year, and that’s why we’ve
been in so many tight overtime
games and come out on the
wrong end of those. But that
wasn’t the case tonight. They
were the better team.”
A late goal by junior forward
Adam Winborg did little more
than
prevent
Robson
from
getting a shutout. It was too
late, way too late. Michigan
knew it.
The
Wolverines
couldn’t
clear the mental hurdle that
comes
along
with
getting
in such a deep
hole
in
an
elimination
game.
Not
starting on time
put Michigan in
a spot it couldn’t
come back from,
and it ended the
Wolverines’
season.
“Mentally, it’s hard,” Pearson
said. “It’s hard when you’re one
game down and all of a sudden
you’re down 1-0, 2-0. The mind
is a powerful thing and I just
don’t know if we were in the
right frame of mind or believed
we could come in and win this
game tonight.
“If you’re in that spot, it’s a
bad spot to be in.”

RIAN RATNAVALE
Daily Sports Writer

BAILEY JOHNSON
Daily Sports Writer

ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily
Junior forward Jake Slaker said that the Michigan hockey team didn’t come to play in Saturday’s season-ending loss.

They came
to play and
we didn’t. It
showed.

We’ve had
trouble scoring
goals. We really
have all year.

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Daily writers Anna Marcus, Laney Byler and Bailey Johnson are among the female sports writers who have covered Michigan hockey for The Daily.

He said, “That’s
ridiculous. She’s
on deadline, she
has a job to do.”

I think every
woman in this
field has stories
like that.

You also want
them to know
so they have
your back.