8 — Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Novice rowing program turns walk-ons into national champions
In
observance
of
Women’s
History Month, The Daily’s sports
section is launching its second
annual series aimed at telling the
stories of female athletes, coaches
and teams at the University from
the perspective of the female sports
writers on staff. We continue the
series with this story from Daily
Sports Writer Lane Kizziah.
Last spring, as the 2V8 boats
lined up at the start of the grand
final of
the
NCAA
Rowing
Championships, Madison Byrd
took a second to appreciate
where she was. She sat with arms
outstretched and her blade in
the water, and as she waited for
the horn to sound, something
dawned on her.
Byrd was about to race for a
national championship in a sport
she knew little to nothing about
just two years earlier.
“I was shaking because I was
so nervous,” Byrd said. “But I
was also so thankful for what the
novice program had done for me.”
The current junior walked onto
the novice team — for athletes that
hadn’t been recruited to row — at
the beginning of her freshman
year. Like most of the novice
rowers, she was a competitive
athlete in another sport in high
school. Byrd knew she couldn’t
play volleyball, her first love, at a
school like Michigan, but she still
had an “itch to compete” after
graduation. She wasn’t ready to
give up being a student athlete.
At the suggestion of a friend,
Byrd reached out to the novice
coach midway through her senior
year and started training for
tryouts before she even got on
campus, although this wasn’t the
norm for freshmen joining the
team.
“The novice coach does a lot of
recruiting on campus,” Byrd said.
“I’d guess every girl on campus
has been approached by the
rowing team at Welcome Week or
in the Diag or Festifall and a mass
email goes out at the beginning of
the year.”
That mass email is what drew
Lara Vanderbilt to the team this
fall.
Like the majority of the novice
team, the sophomore transfer
student didn’t know much about
the sport before deciding to try
out. But, that hasn’t limited her
success as she’s spent all spring
bouncing between the top two
novice boats.
“(Tryouts) were a little scary,
just because there were so many
girls there,” Vanderbilt said.
“I really wanted to find a like-
minded group of women that
would be my great friends and I
could get strong with.”
In such a technical sport, the
novices spend the beginning
of fall season working on the
mechanics of the rowing stroke.
From the catch to the drive and
the finish, there are dozens of
small details that can take years
for a rower to fine-tune. Not only
does a rower have to focus on her
own stroke, she also has to make
sure that her timing matches the
seven other athletes in the boat.
Despite the difficulty of this
juggling act, novices are thrown
into the mix off the bat.
“You start off novice year and
you plop eight girls in a boat and
you don’t know what starboard or
port is,” Byrd said. “But, you take
a hold of the oar and you start
moving up and down on the slide.
Slowly but surely, your coach
is teaching you how to insert
the blade into the water, how to
pull through, how to feather the
blade.”
Although it’s a very technical
sport, the lack of positions in
rowing make it more adaptable
than others, such as soccer or
basketball, where it can take years
for players to learn the nuances
of a particular role. Once the
novices conquer the mechanics of
the stroke, they are ready to race.
While the actual movements
may be adaptable, the physical
and mental strains of training
can create a hard transition
into the sport. A combination of
self-selection and cuts shrink
the group from almost 200 to
just three boats of eight by way
of conditioning inside on ergs,
which rowers refer to as “torture
devices.”
Those who stay — like Byrd
and Vanderbilt — stick out the
arduous
training
because
of
strong connections with their
teammates and a competitive
drive. Through facing constant
physical challenges, these women
are pushed farther than they ever
thought was possible, leaving
them to wonder what else they’re
capable of.
“I love the saying, ‘Those
who stay will
be
champions’
because if you
stick it out all
four
years,
you will be a
champion in so
many
ways,”
Byrd said. “It
shapes
your
character
into
something
you
never
thought
it could be. You have a whole
new take on life and how to get
through difficult situations. It
gives you way more motivation to
get through challenges in life.”
The novice team gives these
women the rare opportunity to
compete as Division I athletes
with no prior experience in their
sport — making the physical and
mental challenges of adjusting to
a new sport worth the effort.
Many of these women, like
Byrd, go on to have remarkable
careers on the varsity team later
in their careers. Senior Victoria
Glunt may have started on the
novice team three years ago, but
by her junior year,
she was rowing
across the finish
line in of the NCAA
Championships
in the top varsity
eight.
Senior
Emily Krebs has a
similar story. After
starting out as a
walk on, she was a
member of the 1V4
that finished fifth
in the country last spring.
Novice year is full of firsts,
from the first time on an erg
to the first time on the water,
rowing under a pink sky. Another
first is fast approaching for this
year’s novices: the first spring
race, which will take place next
weekend against Harvard.
“It’s hard as a novice rower who
has never had the opportunity to
race — it’s hard to imagine that day
coming,” Vanderbilt said. “People
who have experience racing talk
about it as this culminating,
beautiful but very hard moment,
but none of us can really imagine
it. All of the physical building of
this winter has been to do well at
these races but we’re just sort of
dreaming up what it would be.”
Byrd
remembers
her
first
spring race well. Going in with no
expectations, the top novice eight
faced Ohio State and Notre Dame.
“When we lined up for our
first race, we thought ‘Let’s see
if we really can be good,’ and we
won that race,” Byrd said. “It’s
a shock to your system because
racing a two (kilometers) hurts
like hell. That’s what you have to
deal with physically. Mentally,
what you go through during a
race, you have to stay so focused
on the rhythm and the person in
front of you. You’re also letting
your competitive nature fuel you
in order to walk back up on teams
and cross the finish line first even
though it hurts horribly.”
As the 2V8 boats lined up at
the start of the grand final of the
NCAA championships last spring,
Byrd sat at the catch, listening to
the announcer call out the boats.
In lane one, Texas. Lane two,
Virginia. Lane three Washington.
Lane four, California. Lane five,
Michigan.
Even through her nerves —
whether in her first novice race
or last year’s grand final in which
Michigan came in fourth —
Byrd has always appreciated the
unique opportunity of being able
to compete for the Wolverines, an
opportunity she rightfully earned
through her commitment to the
novice program. And now, she
knows the experience has been
worth even more.
“Every single day has pushed
me past every single point where
I don’t think I can go any further,”
Byrd said. “Mostly because I’m
so inspired and motivated by
my teammates every day. I have
a newfound sense of how far I
can push myself and how hard I
can work in order to get the best
outcome possible.”
LANE KIZZIAH
Daily Sports Writer
ALEC COHEN/Daily
The Michigan rowing team includes athletes who started rowing through the novice program, like Madison Byrd, who competed at the NCAA Championships.
March spotlight finding Livers
DES
MOINES,
Iowa
—
At Michigan’s media day in
October, Isaiah Livers sat with
two reporters as a swarm of
cameras huddled around Jordan
Poole a few tables away.
Naturally, the conversation
shifted to Poole, and Livers’
reaction to seeing his best
friend rocket to national fame
overnight. At the time, Livers
said he could never imagine
being
in
Poole’s
situation,
insisting he works better out of
the media spotlight.
“I think when you go through
life, you’re always gonna get
overlooked,” Livers said. “I just
feel like that’s just how life is.”
Saturday night in Des Moines,
those roles suddenly reversed.
This time, Livers’ name shot
across national airwaves after
posterizing Florida’s Andrew
Nembhard to help send the
Wolverines to the Sweet Sixteen
— the zenith of a postseason
in which he has averaged 12.0
points per game
on
58
percent
shooting.
As
soon
as
Michigan
opened
the
doors
to
its
postgame locker
room,
Livers
was surrounded
by
media
members,
two
and
sometimes
three-deep.
Without
the
assumption that Livers was
amidst the huddle, it would’ve
been impossible to locate him.
Across the room, sophomore
forward CJ Baird looked on in
awe as his often-overlooked
teammate
found
himself
in
the spotlight. While the media
attention was new — even to
his teammates — the dunk itself
wasn’t.
“I’ve gotten dunked on by him
like six or seven times,” Baird
said “… It’s great to see it on other
people. Cause we get dunked
on all the time in practice and
finally seeing that on somebody
else, it’s good.”
Those
highlight-reel
moments,
though,
hadn’t
manifested themselves in games.
Livers’ athleticism has always
been on display, on the defensive
end or in pregame warmups, but
the confidence to go for it in a
game had eluded him.
But as he drove to the rim with
just Nembhard in his way, Livers
knew this was
different. Out of
the corner of his
eye, he caught
Poole pointing to
the sky, signaling
the
alley-oop
that Livers might
normally
settle
for.
Not this time.
Livers
took
off from beyond
the restricted arc, exploding
onto the rim with two hands
and only realizing the ball had
gone through when Michigan’s
bench shot to the air in delight.
As Livers returned to the floor,
Poole’s calls for a pass had
turned to a celebratory flex.
“When you see Isaiah dunk
the ball, it looks different from
your perspective but we see stuff
like that all the time,” Poole
said. “And being able to show his
athleticism, it’s just amazing and
it’s awesome.”
Just eight minutes earlier,
Livers had found himself in an
all-too-familiar spot, sitting on
the bench with his confidence
sputtering after a mental lapse
that allowed the Gators to finish
a lob at the basket. Assistant
coach
DeAndre
Haynes,
recognizing Livers’ frustration,
instructed him to move on and
take the ball to the basket with
confidence.
For the rest of the game, he
sat for just 1:24, scoring seven
points and igniting Michigan to
a 64-49 win.
“It’s incredible,” said assistant
coach Luke Yaklich. “Isaiah’s
worked his tail off and he has
heard so many times in film
sessions, ‘When are you going to
take the ball to the basket hard?
And land on two feet and finish
at the rim or dunk on somebody.’
“And
that
moment
right
there was so fun because it was
a culmination of a lot of film
sessions and a lot of individual
skill development work to get
him to that spot.”
As Livers returned to the
sideline with 24 seconds left
and the win long secured, John
Beilein met him with a hug as
the Wolverines’ fans behind
the
bench
rose
in
unison.
Eventually, he made his way
back to Haynes, who gave him
two congratulatory slaps on the
chest and one final message.
“I told you, man.”
Against Texas Tech, a tough lesson
With the bruises of last
weekend’s weekend series with
No. 19 Texas Tech behind it, the
Michigan baseball team knows
that it wasn’t good enough.
“We
got
exposed,”
said
Michigan coach Erik Bakich.
“We
couldn’t
hold
(Texas
Tech) down in the bullpen.
They sped the game up on us
defensively, they ran out one
mid-to-upper 90s pitcher after
the next and we weren’t able to
handle it as well as we would
have liked to.”
The setback comes after
a first third of the season
where
the
Wolverines
put
on a show, winning 15 of 19
games with all components of
the team clicking except for
a week in California, where
Michigan’s offense struggled.
That problem seemed to fix
itself in the first homestand
of the season, when it crushed
opponents
Manhattan
and
Western
Michigan.
The
solution,
though,
was
temporary.
“We just couldn’t string
(clutch)
at-bats
together
against Texas Tech when we
had our scoring opportunities,”
Bakich said. “We probably had
the best chance to win a game
in game three against Texas
Tech. We had the bases loaded
twice and just couldn’t get that
big hit. Against a good team,
that’s what you need. You need
those two-out RBIs.”
The sine curve of the offense
wasn’t
the
only
struggle
against the Red Raiders — even
Michigan’s strengths seemed
to
wilt.
The
Wolverines’
defense
committed
eight
errors, costing them nine runs.
Its pitching walked 19 batters,
13 of which came from a leaky
bullpen.
“They took advantage of our
mistakes and they did what
we’ve done to a lot of the teams
that we’ve played and opened
up a large margin in the
scoring,” Bakich said. “When
they walked us or made errors
against us it usually turned
into a big inning, and that’s
what Texas Tech did against
us.”
Now it’s time for Michigan
to learn. The Big Ten season
is around the corner, and with
it comes the opportunity to
play consistently good teams
— those that will make the
Wolverines pay when they
make mistakes, in the same
way the Red Raiders did.
“The validation of having
been in coaching and being in
college baseball for a long time,
having validation that we’re on
the right track,” Bakich said.
“(Texas Tech is) ahead of us
right now but we’re getting
there and seeing how close
we were through the early
and middle part of the game,
and seeing exactly what we
can point to with some costly
mistakes.”
It
was
an
important
weekend for Michigan. A team
that has been high on itself was
grounded. It can hit the reset
button with this gut check.
The Wolverines saw what they
thought they were and saw
they had a long way to go.
The timing of the measuring
stick,
though,
is
key
for
Michigan. It’s March instead
of June, and the Wolverines
have time to learn and reach
their potential.
“I haven’t lost a single ounce
of confidence in our team,”
Bakich said. “And what type
of team that we’re going to
have this year as the season
continues.”
THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Writer
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Sophomore forward Isaiah Livers dunked on Andrew Nembhard Saturday.
I’ve gotten
dunked on
by him six or
seven times.
If you stick
it out all four
years, you will
be a champion.
KENT SCHWARTZ
Daily Sports Writer
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Michigan coach Erik Bakich said that the Michigan baseball team got exposed against Texas Tech last weekend.