Michigan softball coach Carol Hutchins had a choice to make in the middle of the 2009 season.

One of the best athletes in her lineup, center fielder Molly Bausher, was one of her worst hitters. She was fast, yet struggled to reach base. Hutchins needed a lineup spot for then freshman Amanda Chidester, so Hutchins sat Bausher.

“She was our tenth player last year, and she wasn’t real happy about it,” Hutchins said. “But you know what, I wasn’t happy about it, either.”

Bausher expected to come to Michigan - she arrived as one of the vaunted class of players following the 2005 national championship season - and make a difference. Then she hit .210 through her first three years, striking out almost four times as much as she walked.

“That was really hard,” Bausher said. “Because I came here expecting to be this big change and big impact on this team and to have that taken away in a way and not having any impact anymore, not having the ability to make an impact in the lineup was hard.”

It was a long way from her youth in Las Vegas, when she commuted every weekend in a 36-foot white Winnebago on Interstate 15 past Baker, Barstow and Victorville, Calif., to play softball for the Southern California Worth Firecrackers.

Her parents, Don and Leslie, would dock the motor home at Los Alamitos High School in Huntington Beach, Calif., the Firecrackers practice site, about 50 feet from the field.

“It was different,” Bausher said. “Definitely my friends at school were like, ‘How do you do this? You have no childhood memories.’

“But I did. I had both sides.”

Travel by Winny started when Bausher was in middle school and her sister, Sara, was in high school. Leslie said Sara, a former softball player at Louisville, had been asked by Louisville’s coaches to play a year in Southern California for a higher level of competition.

The Baushers took Molly along for the ride.

For the most part over the next five-plus years through middle school and high school, the Baushers made the weekly four-plus hour trek for softball. Leslie and Don slept in the master bedroom in the back and Molly took the queen-sized pullout couch in the main room.

Purchasing the Winnebago was a strategic decision, too. It allowed Molly to study and sleep on the way back from Huntington Beach to Las Vegas on Sunday nights and saved on weekly hotel rooms.

The home had a DirectTV satellite. On Saturdays and Sundays, while Molly practiced with her team, the Baushers played the affable hosts to the rest of the team’s parents in the home just off the field. Then after practice, she’d go out like any other high school kid - just with friends who she didn’t go to high school with.

“It was just like being home,” Leslie said. “It was pretty cool, you know, very comfortable. Just like being home. Molly would be out with her friends and she’d come home, if you will, they’d bring her home to the motor home.”

While the motor home never made it to Michigan - the Baushers sold it after Molly graduated from Spring Valley High School - it is a big reason she ended up in Ann Arbor.

And after three years of struggling and bouncing around Michigan’s lineup, Bausher finally found her place.

Hutchins placed Bausher back in the lineup full time this season - as the No. 9 hitter. There, she played well in a place that has more value than most believe, a spot with little glamour or attention.

Bausher has career highs in average (.290), runs batted in (18), doubles (8), slugging percentage (.352) and on-base percentage (.322). She also has 40 hits, currently tying her career high. She's a good fit for No. 2 Michigan, 44-6 overall, 16-1 in Big Ten action heading into a two-game set at Iowa that will wrap up the regular season.

“You kind of get underplayed a little bit,” Bausher said. “It’s kind of like, the position is kind of like a successful, people don’t see it as a spot that was very important to the lineup but it was a disguised important part. Hutch always says it brings around the lineup, helps it flow in a way.”

She also embraced any role. Usually an outfielder and Michigan’s starting center fielder for at least portions of three seasons, Hutchins moved her to shortstop for 15 games when Stephanie Kirkpatrick was injured.

“I think she’s found her groove,” Hutchins said. “And she’s doing her part. That’s all we need her to do. Sure, it’d be great if she hit .400 and 17 home runs, but that’s not her role.

“Her role is to get on base, have good at-bats and turn the lineup over.”

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