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.

