Mark Snyder

Detroit Free Press

The Michigan Softball Academy's seventh edition was a success by any measure.

The money raised to combat breast cancer was higher than ever before, with more than $151,000 through the Thursday night's auction, with beautiful weather as the more than 300 participants rotated through stations to refine their skills, all capped by the Home Run Derby, where U-M football coach Jim Harbaugh and former star quarterback Rick Leach held their Home Run Derby.

While Leach won the derby by hitting the lone home run, with each taking more than a dozen swings, both received significant cheers with everyone understanding the cause.

For Patty Hanson, who lives in Ludington and formerly lived in Saline, coming to the Academy works on a number of levels. She enjoys participating with her daughter, Beth Connor, and has attended all seven years because of her cousin, U-M softball coach Carol Hutchins.

"It's for a great, great cause," said Hanson, herself a breast cancer survivor.

Because of Hutchins, she was coming before she was diagnosed but now appreciates it even more personally.

"It blows my mind (the money raised)," Hanson said. "There's a lot of survivors, I am one. I was coming before that but when you go in and you're scared to death and you see all this new equipment and technology? My cancer was one millimeter and it picked it up. Had it not picked it up, it would have been a whole other year and I would have been in trouble. So anything you can do for research for breast cancer, I'm there."

Harbaugh's wife, Sarah, was the honorary chair of the event and made a brief speech at the start.

But his presence at the end was magnetic to the fans.

"Coach (Hutchins) asked, so I was honored to do it," Harbaugh said before the derby, which he practiced for a bit. "Sarah did a wonderful job and she is having a lot of fun. I'm having fun, too... This is one of those premier events that coach puts on."

The Leach-Harbaugh pairing goes back 40 years, to when Harbaugh was a teenager whose father was a U-M assistant coach and Leach was U-M's quarterback, famously scoring a touchdown and having ballboy Harbaugh run into the end zone to hug him.

Harbaugh said he was well aware of Leach's prowess, even at 59 years old, having seen Leach play major league baseball. Harbaugh played down the expectations before it started, saying he was "striving for respectability."

Walking over to Alumni Field, participating and donating was no issue for Harbaugh, who has great admiration for Hutchins. It was a sentiment echoed by other athletic department members, such as women's basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico, who had her own team participating as well.

"Hutch is amazing," Harbaugh said. "I firmly believe every organization runs on enthusiasm. It's like the gas in the tank and nobody has more enthusiasm for what she does than Hutch does, for everything. It's infectious, it rubs off on everybody... She's done it at the highest level for about the longest time. There's an attitude of gratitude that she's at our school."

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