Welcome to All Blue

It was 30 degrees. I remember it being colder, but 30 degrees is what the box score says. It was snowing hard enough that they had to shovel the field at halftime. There were not many of us at the University of Michigan Soccer Stadium that night, but there was a strong contingent from Princeton and things got chippy between the fans pretty early. Outdoor soccer in mid-November is a hard sell, but it was the first round of the 2018 NCAA men's tournament, and I had a feeling things might get weird.

Almost three snowy hours after the match kicked off, Michigan walked away with a 1-1 draw, and advanced 11-10 after 13 rounds of penalty kicks. One of the most memorable moments of the match happened off the pitch, when a Princeton parent started mouthing off at the groundskeeper about how they had shoveled. The groundskeeper ended up in the stands. Of course a Princeton fan asked to speak to the manager.

Noah Kleedtke scored the equalizer for Michigan. Jackson Regan scored the penalty kick goal that sent Michigan to the second round. It wasn't the first time I had ventured beyond the Big House or Crisler to watch some Wolverines play, but it's the earliest such game I can remember the details. It helped me to stop thinking about Wolverine soccer or field hockey or tennis as an extension of my football fandom, but as its own thing, which I supported on its own merits.

Over the course of the next year I would manage to see 23 different Wolverines varsity teams live, I begrudgingly subscribed to BTN+, I went all-in. All of my pro teams were bad and Michigan overflowed the void. I started thinking about what it would look like if more Michigan fans knew just a little bit more about what's happening at the smaller stadiums that dot campus. I have been thinking about it ever since.

Welcome to All Blue.

What is All Blue

First and foremost, All Blue is a weekly newsletter where every Thursday I will recap you on the week that was and prepare you for the week ahead in Michigan Olympic sports. "Olympic sports" is an ill-defined category that basically includes everything other than football, basketball (both teams), and hockey. Every other sport is fair game, from field hockey to tennis, from rowing to track, from soccer to softball.

My goal isn't to make you a huge fan of every single thing the Wolverines play, but I will feel I have done my job if you watch even one thing a month that you otherwise would not have known what is happening. If you attend a couple of things, I'll be over the moon.

The format of the newsletter will evolve but here's the gist:

• Three recaps of important results from the previous week.
• One athlete spotlight, to make you a better rounded fan.
• Three previews of events I think might be worth watching (or attending!) in the week ahead, with an emphasis on stuff you can watch without a B1G+ subscription.
• Quick hits bullets if too much happened for three recaps to be enough, or if there is significant news that is not directly related to a specific event.

The site will also have the Watch Grid, where I keep track of every event that is going to be broadcast or streamed somewhere other than B1G+. In the future, I'd like to add other resources, but we'll start with the Watch Grid (punnier name pending).

I hope to also do periodic column-y stuff, still mostly focused on Olympic sports but hey, if I'm writing about Michigan athletics on a regular basis I probably will not be able to resist the urge to write about football here and there. Expect things like volleyball bracketology or statistically-backed thoughts on the MBB and WBB schedules. (Maybe, just maybe, a periodic Detroit City Football Club piece too.)

Olympic Sports?

As I said, the easiest way to define the scope of the newsletter is to say "anything other than football, men's and women's basketball, and hockey". There are several ways to describe Michigan Everything Else, but we're going with "Olympic sports". Is that quite accurate? No, water polo and field hockey and track and soccer are Olympic sports but lacrosse isn't (yet). I used to say "non-revenue" sports and now feel that designation is potentially inaccurate (I don't actually know the finances of softball but would you be shocked to learn it turns a small profit?) and also demeaning. So Olympic Sports it is.

No women's basketball but yes baseball and softball? Club sports?

Yes, that's the plan. While women's basketball is almost certainly the team outside the Big Three that I follow the closest, I am not sure I could do it justice in this space. He covers the whole Big Ten but if you want very good WBB coverage, talk to Wyatt.

Softball and baseball also get good coverage elsewhere, but ball-and-bat sports are the ones I'm the best at talking about and a good portion of their seasons (baseball especially) happen while every single other sport is over, so they're in.

The only club sport I can say with any certainty will be mentioned in the newsletter regularly is women's hockey, but past that, we'll see.

Who Am I

Hi, I'm jay. I have seen 25 of Michigan's 27 varsity sports compete in-person*. If you have any idea who I am it's probably because of one of two things I did that gathered small but dedicated audiences:

• I wrote about what I then called "non-revenue sports" for Maize n' Brew for most of the 2019-20 athletic season until it ended rather abruptly.
• I am the Michigan Olympics Guy, having spent the 2021 Tokyo Olympics obsessively tracking the performance of Michigan-associated athletes in a Google Doc and on Twitter. It was very fun.

Or maybe you recognize my personal account from some much more prominent Michigan Twitter person's mentions. Either way, I have spent much of the last five years closely following Michigan sports that are not football, men's basketball, and hockey (I follow those closely too but so do lots of people who are better at writing than me).

I am a lifelong Wolverine fan who went to a D3 school for undergrad, Michigan for grad school, and I now live in Ypsilanti. I am a data librarian by trade and if you look hard enough you can probably figure out where. Let's just say that one of the reasons I got into Olympic sports is I still have an MCard.

*The other two are Rowing, which I should manage to see in 2024, their only 2023 home meet was on a bad day for me, and Men's Golf, which almost never has home events, I'm basically just waiting for them to host a Big Ten Championship.

Is it free?

All Blue is free, both the Thursday column and anything else I write. But I have and will continue to spend money making this newsletter happen, so feel free to drop a one-time donation in the tip jar or subscribe through Ghost, where I've made the subscription $1 a month. My first goal is to recoup my costs for the logo and domain and switch from a monthly Ghost subscription to an annual one.

What's the best way to follow you?

That one's easy: subscribe to the newsletter.

I'm on Twitter in two places: posts on the All Blue account will be pretty rote– new column alerts, game reminders, scoreboard updates– while almost all posts that contain any analysis will stay on my personal account at yourpaljay_.

I'm also on Bluesky at yourpaljay, and I once I have an extra invite code I don't want to use for a friend there will be an All Blue account on Bluesky too. Will I ever use Threads? Not if I can help it, but we'll see.

Well this sounds great. What now?

Subscribe to the newsletter! First column will drop August 24th, the first Thursday where there will both be games to recap and preview. Welcome, let's watch some sports together. Go Blue.