Michigan senior Meredith Way weaves through the Michigan State defense in a game earlier this season. Way and the Wolverines open NCAA Tournament play on Saturday.

Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com

Editor's Note: Due to a reporting error, Nancy Cox's two NCAA tournament appearances and two Big Ten championships have been corrected in the story.

During the first winter after Marcia Pankratz returned to the Michigan field hockey program, she called one of her best players, Meredith Way, to her side.

In the midst of a torturous set of workouts that once made Way vomit in Lane 1 of the indoor track at the school, she made her a promise of sorts.

Do this. Fight through these workouts. Become conditioned like I think you can. It’ll be worth it.

“I told her what would really satisfy me, and fulfill me as a coach, is to some day see her lift a trophy up over her head,” Pankratz said. “I’m trying to help them get there so they can have the experience they want and they can look back on and love Michigan and love their time here.

“They are going to remember that part.”

Pankratz is the reason field hockey is successful at Michigan. She’s why the program is relevant nationally and part of the reason why the Wolverines will return to the NCAA tournament this weekend in Chapel Hill, N.C. They'll play Old Dominion at 2 p.m. Saturday.

When she took the job in 1996, Michigan had never finished higher than third in the Big Ten. It had never reached the NCAA tournament.

Within two years, Michigan had tied for the Big Ten regular season title. In 2001, she won the first women’s team national championship in school history.

Then, after the 2004 season, she left to help start 4Goals, a high school recruiting consulting company. While she was gone, Michigan dipped.

Under Nancy Cox, Michigan reached the NCAA tournament twice in four years. In 2005, Michigan won the Big Ten tournament title and in 2007 won the Big Ten regular season title. In 2008, the Wolverines bottomed out with an 8-12 record, the worst year at the program since 1996, when Pankratz went 7-11 in her first year.

Before last season, Pankratz returned. Almost immediately things started to change.

“For a while there, it was almost like we were okay with losing,” senior midfielder/forward Paige Laytos said. “And Marcia completely erased that. Losing wasn’t an option. That’s what I was used to in high school, that losing wasn’t an option, and to go back to that and push ourselves past our limit, I don’t think we had that before Marcia came in.”

She did it through intense workouts. By making her players run and test the limits of their fitness, she made them lean on each other to get through. She showed them they could run and be tired ... and still compete.

She taught them being exhausted was okay because it meant you were pushing yourself.

“That was never really a focus point before she got here,” said Way, a senior midfielder/back who was named first-team All-Big Ten last week. “That has tremendously, tremendously helped us.”

It helped lead Michigan to five overtime wins this season, including in the semifinals of the Big Ten tournament, 4-3 over Penn State.

In those preseason workouts this year -- ones that came because Pankratz felt her team came into this season out of shape -- her team began to again believe it could win.

“You don’t just snap your fingers and have confidence,” Pankratz said. “I think it comes from feeling that we’ve worked hard, being prideful in the fact that you’ve prepared and trained hard and being confident that you’ve done everything you can to put yourself in position to win.

“That’s part of being confident and where they are now for sure.”

Before its game with Penn State on Sept. 26, Michigan was 5-4. The Wolverines had dropped their first four games, three of them to teams in the top 6 in the country. They responded by winning five in a row entering the Big Ten opener.

Against the Nittany Lions, they won, 2-0, on the road in one of the more difficult atmospheres in the league.

From there, they just lost twice more - 4-3 against then-No. 1 Maryland and 2-1 against Ohio State.

Which led to last Sunday and the promise Pankratz made. Michigan (15-6) again played Ohio State, this time for the Big Ten championship. Senior Alicia Mayer and freshman Rachael Mack scored.

Michigan beat the Buckeyes, 2-1, to win the Big Ten title. In those moments, returning to coaching and to Michigan became worth it. Marcia Pankratz had built Michigan into a power.

Again.

“That final day, I said ‘Mer, please go up and get that trophy and put it up over your head for me,’” Pankratz said. “That was cool. I enjoyed that. It made me feel great.

“That’s the best moments, to look in their eyes and see how happy they are. And that the experience has been all worth it.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.