The bat made contact, popping the ball up into short right field, just behind the second baseman.

After a collision between junior right fielder Ashley Rose McLaury and senior second baseman Jackie Genow, the ball somehow still rested securely in Genow’s glove. The Michigan club softball team had made the third and final out against Central Michigan, earning the Great Lakes North Conference title.

The victory on Sunday, which secured a trip to the 2011 National Club Softball Association World Series in Columbus, Ga., has been a long time coming.

In 2002, two students interested in playing softball, but not at the Varsity level, founded the club program. Now, eight seasons later, the team has developed quickly, expanding from a pickup team on Elbel Field to a conference-winning program.

The Wolverines (12-3) packed up their cars early Sunday morning and drove to Mt. Pleasant, Mich. for their final games of the fall season – a triple-header against Central Michigan. Two wins would give them first place in the conference. But if Grand Valley won just one game that weekend, the threat of a tie for first would loom.

A sweep, however, would give Michigan the berth to nationals.

Junior Kelly Babcock pitched a shutout in game one, giving the Wolverines the 9-0 win. During the next two games, pitched by junior Lyndsay Berger and Babcock, respectively, Michigan limited the Chippewas' offense to just eight runs. Sophomore Brigid Lynch, junior Genevieve Kotyuk and Burger earned top offensive honors for the Wolverines, consistently getting on base and producing RBIs. Michigan ended up sweeping the series with scores of 6-2 and 13-6 in the second and third games.

“It was absolutely freezing at the game and it was snowing,” said Berger, who is co-president of the club. “It was our last game of the year and everyone was pretty tired. As soon as the last out was made, we all freaked out. ‘We just won the conference, we can go to nationals!’ ”

The shutout against Central Michigan was Michigan's fifth of the season, as it blanked Indiana - South Bend in three games on Oct. 10 and shut out Bowling Green in a game the following weekend.

The club softball team has outscored its opponents 126-63 this season, proving that talent on the diamond can be found outside of Alumni Field.

Berger and her co-president, junior Jessica Kraft, have worked together to make sure everything runs smoothly throughout the season, since being involved in a club sport brings upon many different types of responsibilities.

“I think it’s a completely different experience,” Berger said, comparing the club team to a varsity program. “There is a lot more of a balancing act that goes on. A lot of girls are challenging softball with one, sometimes two jobs, and a full academic load. In addition to that we have to provide our own transportation. We’re paying for equipment, bats, uniforms ourselves.”

This player-run team definitely has its ups and downs – last weekend only one umpire showed up to a game, and the team has to fund the entirety of its trip to Georgia. But the hard work its members have put in throughout the course of the season has certainly made it worthwhile.

“I think this team is one of the most talented teams I’ve seen while being here,” said Michigan graduate student and fifth-year shortstop Kelly Bartlett. “What’s made us really good this year is that we have an older team; a lot of our team members are juniors and seniors. Over the past couple of years, we’ve really developed together, making our individual talents even better.”

This year, the Wolverines returned thirteen players, nine of whom are juniors.

“We’ve banded together as a team,” Barlett said. “We realized we had to stick together and face the opposition with those issues. If we started fighting internally, then things would start to fall apart.”

Junior Ashley Rose McLaury said earning a bid to the World Series was something the players have wanted for a while and receiving it was an all-around team accomplishment.

“I think that we have a lot fun when we’re together,” McLaury said. “And that chemistry translates into us being able to work together as a team. At the end of the third game on Sunday we all wanted that out. We wanted to finish it and have that good solid end to a really awesome fall season.”