Ann Arbor – A coach can never know for sure how players will mesh, who will become leaders, who will become the glue, who will set the tone.
What Michigan softball coach Carol Hutchins knows now is her seven seniors are wonderfully gifted athletes and more importantly have created a team-wide chemistry she could never have predicted. The group will participate in their third Women’s College World Series in four years and second straight, having come up just short as the national champion runner-up last season.
Even the seniors, who have grown together this last handful of years, find that being on the brink of another World Series -- which begins for the second-ranked Wolverines on Thursday night in Oklahoma City when they face LSU in a first-round game -- is a breathtaking achievement.