A year like no other

More than titles make this school year one worth remembering

JIM ROSE Rose Beef

Tom Goss will be hard-pressed to avoid a bit of a sophomore slump. With less than a year under his belt as Michigan's athletic director, Goss has seen his department enjoy more success in a single school year than it has in a long, long time - maybe ever.

With national championships in football and hockey; Big Ten Tournament championships in soccer and men's basketball; a Heisman trophy; record-breaking individual performances in cross country and track; and several other teams - softball, rowing and women's gymnastics, at the moment - ranked among the nation's best, the 1997-98 school year will long be remembered as a truly remarkable one for Michigan athletics.

University President Lee Bollinger said simply, "This is the greatest university in the world." And that was before the Rose Bowl.

It's been more than 30 years since a university won national titles in football and hockey in the same year; throw in the success of the rest of Michigan's sports and you've got a decent argument for including '97-98 among the all-time best.

But national championships and Heisman trophies pale in comparison to the most significant sports-related event of the school year - the death of wrestler Jefferey Reese.

Reese's death stunned the campus and, to this day, casts a sobering shadow over the year's events. If nothing else, his death reminded us all that sports have a tendency to get blown out of proportion on campus - and that stat lines and scoreboards matter very little in the grand scheme of things.

But as tragic and incomprehensible as Reese's death was, in the long run it may lead to the University's greatest and most important moments of this historic school year - far greater than any Big Ten title or NCAA ring.

The University moved swiftly to propose changes to make wrestling safer, and within weeks, the NCAA did likewise, adopting many of Michigan's proposed measures on a national scale. The sport continues to change in response to a national study on safety. Michigan athletes - from all sports, not just wrestling - honored Reese by wearing patches on their uniforms.

A scholarship fund was established in Reese's name. Students and athletes continue to organize benefits in remembrance of Reese - this weekend, in fact, a car wash will be held outside Yost Ice Arena to contribute to the scholarship fund.

Nobody was prepared for Reese's death, and nobody knew exactly how to handle it. But in retrospect, four months after the fact, Reese's family and friends can take a small amount of solace in knowing that so many good things can come from something so awful.

Think of it this way: Reese's life was cut tragically short, but his memory has already touched thousands more people than anyone could ever have imagined.

And because of that, we can watch the Rose Bowl and the hockey tournament, and we can follow today's teams to the Women's College World Series and to NCAAs, and we can read about Charles Woodson and Kevin Sullivan and Marty Turco, and we can say this with some certainty: The past school year was like no other.

To be sure, it was a great year for Michigan's Athletic Department. The football team helped make it a great year. So did the hockey team, and so did all the other teams and athletes that experienced success. But make no mistake: This year did not belong to any of them. It belonged to Jefferey Reese.

- Jim Rose can be reached at jwrose@umich.edu

(Photos by John Kraft, Margaret Myers and Warren Zinn)

Above: Everything came up roses this year for Eric Mayes' Wolverines, who thrilled the campus community by overcoming the nation's toughest schedule to win their first national championship since 1948. Mayes, a senior co-captain, missed most of the season after suffering a knee injury.

Below: Julie Flachs led the field hockey team to the championship game of the Big Ten Tournament.

Robert Traylor exalted after the Wolverines shocked Duke at Crisler Arena in December. The Wolverines went on to win the inaugural Big Ten Tournament, and Traylor announced after the season that he will skip his senior year to enter the NBA.

The most surprising title of the school year was the Michigan hockey team's. The Wolverines won the national championship one year after graduating one of college hockey's most-heralded classes ever.

04-17-98