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

Sports

