At the start of his gymnastics career, sophomore Dan Rais wasn't sure he'd like it. After an experience with bad coaching, he switched gyms and gave the sport one last shot.

Luckily for Michigan, his interest turned into a passion.

"I think we've got several team leaders, and (Rais) is definitely one of them," Michigan coach Kurt Golder said. "I think he leads in the meet. You can pretty much count on Dan. . It's not a guarantee, but it's pretty darn close to it, that he'll turn in a good performance (on floor and vault)."

The floor exercise and vault might be Rais's biggest strengths, but in recent weeks, he turned in several clutch performances on the high bar as well. Earlier in the season, his big release skill, the Jaeger, was problematic. But in three of the final four meets of the season, Rais nailed his set.

"My teammates helped a lot, because they would just yell at me, so I had to start catching (the Jaeger)," Rais said. "I wanted to stay in the lineup so I worked harder to catch it, and spent a lot of time on it."

Rais's regular position in the high-bar lineup was the realization of one of his individual goals for the season. After participating in the event in just one meet last season, Rais participated on the high bar in every meet this season.

In addition to his dependability in competition, the Livonia native acts as one of many extra "coaches" in the gym during practice.

"One thing I like about Dan is (that) during practice - and I encourage this, as much as I can - I hear him give other athletes, his teammates, some advice and feedback, a little bit of coaching," Golder said. "I've always had the philosophy that if you have 18 athletes in the gym, that should be 18 more coaches. Everybody can help everyone else. Our theme this year was, 'Work hard, work smart, help someone, or go home.' And (Rais) is a very helpful guy."

One of Rais's strongest attributes is his excellent air sense, which came in handy during his "afterthought" sport in high school, diving. Even though diving always came second to gymnastics, Rais nonetheless lettered all four years of his high school career. He became team captain and placed ninth at the 2004 State Championships.

"The flipping aspect (of diving, floor exercise, and vault) of course is the same," Rais said. "The only real difference is you can go in headfirst (with diving). You just have to work on air sense for that one."

Rais came through for the Wolverines on the floor exercise and vault at the team qualifiers for the NCAA Championships, even though the team didn't advance to finals. He scored a 9.05 on floor, just missing the cut off for individual qualifiers and advanced to vault qualifiers with a solid 9.25 score.

The sophomore seemed to be unaffected by the raised stakes of the Big Ten and NCAA Championships.

"I don't normally think about meets until I'm there, so I don't really get that nervous," Rais said. "I feed off it - the adrenaline and everything. I like the pressure. It's fun."