The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, April 20, 2022 — 11
Big moments lift Michigan to 2-1 weekend against Maryland
JOEY GOODSIR
Daily Sports Writer
As fifth-year third baseman Tay-
lor Bump stepped into the batter’s
box on Friday, it was clear a break-
through was necessary.
In extra innings, bleeding only
one run would result in another
conference loss. So the No. 22 Mich-
igan softball team could not afford
to strand runners in scoring posi-
tion.
For the Wolverines (26-13 over-
all, 6-6 Big Ten), Bump’s sacrifice
reach sparked a series-defining
offensive shift that pushed them to
2-1 on their roadtrip against Mary-
land (22-18, 8-4).
While it’s easier to picture a
breakthrough coming in the form
of a powerful swing, Bump seized
on her alternative strengths. She
laid down a bunt a few feet in front
of home plate, allowing graduate
second baseman Melina Livingston
to slide into home — ultimately the
game-deciding run in a 5-3 win.
“As a big power hitter, people
don’t necessarily expect a lot of
bunts to come off my bat, but I love
bunting,” Bump said. “I think it’s
something that is often put on the
backburner a little bit … but I live for
those moments. The opportunity to
have a suicide squeeze moment —
that’s huge.”
As the imperfect record suggests,
Michigan didn’t go without paying
the price beforehand. The Wolver-
ines suffered a 5-1 loss to the Ter-
rapins on Thursday after stranding
10 runners.
“Sometimes players end up try-
ing to get hits as opposed to just
tough through an at-bat and make
solid contact,” Michigan associate
head coach Bonnie Tholl said. “I
think that was the mental adjust-
ment that we made (Friday), where
we were able to rally through some
of those tough at-bats with two
outs.”
After Friday’s game-winning
bunt it was an entirely different
story, and this was reflected as
much in the circle as at the plate.
Maryland’s scoring that earned
its sole win came from a two-run
homer in the first inning and a rally
in the fifth that ended senior right-
hander Alex Storako’s weekend.
On Friday, fifth-year left-hander
Meghan Beaubien weathered the
storm.
Beaubien
entered
the
sixth
inning with the bases loaded and
gave up only one hit. While the
Terrapins tied the game, she held
Maryland scoreless the rest of the
way.
Then, Beaubien’s pitching on Sat-
urday proved much less stressful.
There was a moment, just over
two years ago, that I think will be
burned into my memory forever.
With COVID-19 shutting down
the University and the world, the
newsroom played host to an emer-
gency last night of production. A
fear of the unknown hung over
the room, nervous and sad energy
filled everyone. The night marched
on, and one by one people left the
newsroom — but not the sports
section.
I remember standing on the tile
floor next to the conference room
and looking back at the sports desk.
I remember seeing Lane laugh as
she talked with Lily. I remember
Jared, Nick, Spencer and Brandon
all doing stupid things. I remember
Ethan standing next to me, on the
verge of crying for probably the
eighth time that night.
I remember saying something to
him along the lines of, “This won’t
go away. This’ll be back. We’ll be
back.”
Ethan never made it back for a
night of production in the newsroom.
***
The Michigan Daily was never
about journalism for me. It wasn’t
the culmination of a life-long pas-
sion for Michigan sports or a step
on the way to my dream of becom-
ing a journalist. It wasn’t sup-
posed to make me a talented sports
reporter.
Instead, I joined because my
freshman seminar teacher had us
read a men’s soccer article from
The Daily in class. Lost and scared
in Ann Arbor, I struggled to find
friends or a place of belonging.
Then we read that article in class
and I thought to myself, “I like
sports and I like writing, hopefully
they take just anyone.” Thankfully,
they did.
That’s why I joined. Why I
stayed is because of Mike and
Laney and so many other people
who made it the place to be. Talk-
ing about sports, telling stories,
playing touch football and euchre,
laughing and forgetting about
the problems that swirled around
us, they made this big university
small. The place and the people are
what The Daily is to me. The place
and the people are everything to
SportsMonday: An imperfect,
bittersweet goodbye
LANE KIZZIAH
Daily Sports Writer
Today, I went to my last meet-
ing at The Michigan Daily, which
has me thinking a lot about my
first.
It was the fall of freshman year,
and I went to The Daily’s mass
meeting planning to join the news
section or maybe arts. Growing up,
I wasn’t exactly a sports fanatic. I
went to high school in downtown
Chicago where we didn’t have a
football team. I’d never been to a
professional basketball game, and
I really only went to Cubs games
for the hotdogs.
But the sports section lured
me in. There were probably 20
guys sitting around a desk that
was covered in a seemingly ran-
dom assortment of crap — tons of
discarded sheets of paper, a toy
Transformer, an empty fishbowl.
The bulletin boards were covered
with old press passes, notes and
edited stories that had accumulat-
ed over the years. They said they
were the most fun section, and
that was all I needed to hear.
When I signed up, I thought
The Daily would be a fun little
extracurricular. I had no way of
anticipating all of the different
things it would mean to me over
the course of four years.
But at times, I didn’t think I
would spend four years on the
section. I didn’t love Michigan
when I first got here and even con-
templated transferring. It was the
sports section that made me fall
in love with this school. There’s
something about The Daily —not
just the work of it, but the people,
the culture, the physical space —
that makes you feel like you have a
purpose.
At times, it’s been my biggest
source of pride. It’s been the home
base I raced to after my last class,
a place I refused to leave until 2
am when games of euchre had run
their course and 50-cent Cokes
had lost their appeal.
At other times, it’s been the
source of hair-tugging, fist-balling,
snot-nosing frustration. But even
those times don’t seem so bad now
that I’m saying goodbye.
As a Sports Writer, beat mem-
ber and, finally, Managing Sports
Editor, The Daily has taken up
different amounts of my time and
consciousness, each of which has
made me into the person I am
today in different ways. I have
loved and cherished each one of
these roles, but none have made as
big of a difference in my life as the
weeks following that first meeting.
The weeks that made me stay at
Michigan.
I’ve tried to pinpoint what it was
that originally drew me into the
Daily, but there was no single fac-
tor. It’s a blur of 2 am sledding trips,
walks to softball games, jumps in
the river, a sense of confidence and
a passion for something I knew I
was good at. And every softball
game I covered and every late-
night Denny’s run I went on made
me feel like I was part of something
bigger, something important.
My co-MSE, Kent, has had to
remind me that we’re never going
to be satisfied with what we say
in these final columns. There’s no
word that encompasses the feeling
of complete commitment, com-
plete acceptance, complete love
that I’ve found here. Any attempt I
make at summarizing this experi-
ence will be, at best, an inaccurate
approximation. At worst, it’ll be
really fucking cheesy.
But anyone who’s ever been on
the sports section will know the
feeling I’m talking about. It’s in all
of that seemingly random crap cov-
ering the sports desk. It’s in NYPD
runs and chair monkey games and
road trip stories that aren’t funny
to anyone outside of the section
because they just wouldn’t get it.
And, as anyone who’s graduated
could probably tell you, it’s really
hard to give that feeling up.
Last fall, I was interviewing
Daily sports alumni, and I asked
what it was like to go back to the
newsroom after you graduate:
“Some of my best memories in
college were made because of The
Michigan Daily and you step into it
and you kind of get echoes of those
memories,” someone told me. “You
look over to the design desk or the
statement desk and you see the
people who you cared about and
you loved when you were there
yourself, but then you blink and
you realize that the person who’s
sitting there isn’t the person your
mind imagined was sitting there —
it’s someone completely different,
making their own memories. It’s
bittersweet.”
Today, at my last meeting, I
finally understood what he was
talking about. I looked around at all
of the new people that had joined
the section since my tenure ended
in December, talking about all of
the inside jokes and funny stories
that had happened this semester.
And it was bittersweet. It isn’t
my section anymore. It’ll keep
growing and changing and evolv-
ing long after I’m gone.
But it’ll always be there for the
next freshman who walks in and
decides to make it their own.
The Daily.
The newsroom is where I met
my roommates and some of my
best friends. It’s where I went
when I was happy and where I
went when I was sad. When I was
failing classes and the possibility
of a future seemed ludicrous, the
newsroom remained a steadying
force. Its soft roof, the posters, the
items hiding in the corner, a ketch-
up packet on the light, a broken
Transformers toy, a woven basket,
ping pong paddles, random play-
ing cards strewn across the desk,
an Indiana mini bat, a maize t-shirt
from a State News game past, nap-
kins and forks, Steve Pikiell’s head,
pens and so many more items lit-
ter the background of my favorite
memories.
The newsroom had, over the
course of 18-odd months, become
the constant in my life. Become
the source of my life. Then, on that
depressing March night, it was
taken away.
Over the next two years, I
changed a lot. The Daily changed
a lot. The sports section changed a
lot, despite our best efforts. Zoom
bonding and Pictionary became
standard-issue ways to stay con-
nected, but we all know it wasn’t
the same.
The words I told Ethan on the
last night of production came back
to haunt me, eating away at my every
waking moment. The sports section
wasn’t even close to what it had been
before. We were barely surviving.
***
I can’t properly convey to you
what this place and community
mean to me. Emotions are not my
strong suit — anyone who’s had
more than a three second inter-
action with me will tell you that
— but The Daily is the epicenter
of my college experience. It’s the
only reason I’ve cried in college, all
three times.
It made me angry, frustrated,
ashamed, disappointed and just
plain sad more times than I could
count. It showed me how to grow
up and how to deal with problems.
It did what this esteemed Universi-
ty often failed to do and taught me.
It gave me my happiest moments.
It’s a place I’m forever indebted to.
This past fall, when we finally
returned to the newsroom and I
walked up the stairs to this fan-
tastic place and took in the empty
shell of the sports desk, a broad
smile stretched across my face.
When the sophomores and other
writers I hadn’t seen in person
for months walked into the news-
room, I couldn’t have been happi-
er. I was home and hopefully they
would be too.
Months passed, and still things
weren’t the same as before. They
wouldn’t be while I was one of
their editors. But things were
better. The sports section wasn’t,
as I feared, dying. The reasons I
joined, the reasons I wanted to
invest so much time and effort
into this section started popping
up and working their way out
from the shadows.
Four months after my tenure
ended, I walked into the news-
room to put my penultimate
article through edits. I didn’t
know the names of half the faces
clustered around the sports desk;
they were a bunch of freshmen
and sophomores who joined in
the winter, after my editor tenure
ended.
As I went through edits, I lis-
tened to snippets of conversa-
tion and watched people buzz
around to share stories and laugh.
I bugged some people about a fea-
ture for women’s gymnastics and
enjoyed some hijinks.
I’d never felt more at peace. A
book had replaced the ketchup
packet, the transformer was hid-
den somewhere and the desk was
still too clean.
But everything I’d wanted for
two years was there on that night.
The memories I’d formed as a
freshman and sophomore rushed
back. The fear and doubt and
worry that lived in my mind dis-
appeared in an instant.
On our final night of produc-
tion this year, I’m going to stand in
the same spot I did two years ago.
I’m going to look back and see a
freshman on sports do something
stupid and have their friends —
who are also on sports — laugh
at them. I’m going to see people
try to give edits as chaos unfolds
around them. I’m going to watch,
in real time, as someone forms the
same bond with this place that I
have.
I’m going to see something I
will never see again, and it will
be a long time before I feel that
happy.
SportsMonday:
All I ever wanted
The Michigan baseball team has
found the zone.
In an up and down year, three
straight games of consistent pitch-
ing have been a difficult feat. The
pitchers showed flashes of potential
all year. But against Michigan State,
they finally put it all together.
The Wolverines (20-15 overall,
6-3 Big Ten) dominated on Saturday
and Sunday, winning 8-2 and 6-3
respectively, to complete a three-
game weekend sweep of the Spar-
tans (13-19, 2-7). The pitching staff
showed its top form in what could
be a turning point for the remainder
of the season.
“I think it’s just the thing our
staff needed,” sophomore right-
hander Chase Allen said. “ … We got
a bunch of great dudes with great
work and work ethic and a great
pitching coach leading us … so I just
think it was a matter of time and
now we’re finally seeing it.”
But for the pitchers to feast, first
the offense had to establish itself.
Going into Saturday, the Michigan
bats remained hot from their 18-run
slugfest on Friday.
With two outs and two men on
in the first inning, junior designated
hitter Tito Flores sparked the hot
start with a two-RBI double over
the second baseman’s head. Min-
utes later, senior first baseman Jack
Van Remortel mashed a two-run
double of his own to establish a 5-0
lead before Michigan State even
reached the plate.
After the hot start, junior right-
hander Cam Weston didn’t give
the Spartans any breathing room.
Containing their hitters in a 1-2-3
inning, Weston made quick work
in one of the Wolverines’ most com-
plete innings of the year.
Weston’s dominance continued
through seven innings, as he tied his
season-high with nine strikeouts
and allowed just two runs. In relief,
junior left-hander Jacob Denner
cruised through the final batters,
sealing the 8-2 victory.
On Sunday, Allen notched the
third dominant start of the week-
end, throwing five scoreless innings
and allowing just two hits.
As a unit, Michigan’s starters
had one of their best weekends of
the season. Sophomore left-hander
Connor O’Halloran, Weston and
Allen combined for 21 strikeouts
and conceded just four runs in 18
innings.
“We’ve taken the punches, we’ve
been knocked down and we’ve just
played in so many different kinds
of games,” Michigan coach Erik
Bakich said.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Michigan pitching lives up to potential in sweep of Michigan State
JOSEPH ZAIN RODGER
Daily Sports Writer
KENT SCHWARTZ
Daily Sports Writer
MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily
Courtesy of Kent Schwartz
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
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