He put a shovel back where he found it, but there was still some dirt on it.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” his grandfather asked.

Mike didn’t know.

“There wasn’t dirt on the shovel when I got it, so what was the dirt doing on the shovel now?” his grandfather responded.

“Pop, what’s the difference? Why does it matter?”

“If the shovel were better with dirt on it, they’d have made it that way,” his grandfather said. “Clean it the hell up and put it back.”

Judy works in school administration. Every day, she sees what happens when parents let their children slip by.

“Too many times, I see a parent say, ‘It’s my fault they forgot their homework because I forgot to put it in their backpack,’ ” Judy said. “And therefore, the child sees no consequence.”

It creates an atmosphere where children don’t take responsibility for their actions. That’s not the kind of home Mike grew up in, and that’s not the impression he has carried with the Wolverines.

During summer workouts, players had to beat specific times for a series of sprints. If a player couldn’t make the times, he simply worked harder to achieve them.

That's exactly what happened with senior nose tackle Terrance Taylor.

At one point, Taylor was one of the only players on the team who hadn’t met the standards, so he had to complete two extra hours of cardio work. Barwis sat down with Taylor.

“ ‘Son, don’t let it pass you by,’ ” Barwis said to Taylor. “‘You’ve got an opportunity in life, and this is your moment. You only get so many moments in life. Don’t allow somebody else to outwork you and put themselves in a place where you should be.’”

Taylor looks back on that conversation with Barwis as a turning point in his development.

In January, Taylor considered entering the NFL Draft. He weighed 328 pounds at the time and was projected to be a second- or third-round pick. He looked at the amount of work he would have to do to get ready for the Draft and didn’t think he would give NFL teams the best he could. During Michigan's spring game, Taylor wasn’t listed as the first-string defensive tackle, and there were rumors that he wasn’t happy.

Then came Barwis’s talk.

“People look up to me and I can’t make the runs,” Taylor said. “To be a leader, I have to act like a leader. I dedicated myself to losing weight and running better.”

Taylor put the time in and eventually made the standards.

At the end of fall camp, players had to run four loops around the field. Non-seniors had to do a fifth.

But Taylor did the fifth loop, and he did it in “speed time.”

“I did it because I could,” Taylor said. “It wasn’t because I wanted to show off. I just had it in me.”

Now, Taylor weighs 295 and says he’s happy.

“If you let somebody take a shortcut one time, in the future, they’re going to take it five, six, or seven times because it’s easier to do it,” Mike said. “(But if they do it the right way), they start to see what they are capable of. I think because of that they start to change a mindset.”

Others before him

When there were rumors of the military draft going back into effect, Barwis wouldn't let his brothers join the army. Because of a “one child per family” rule, just one of the Barwis sons could have enlisted. Mike insisted it would be him.

“He said, ‘Well, that will never happen,’ ” Judy recalls Mike saying. “ ‘My brothers will never go. I would go before I allowed that to happen.’ ”

Throughout his life, Barwis would always put himself on the line to help a friend, whether he thought it would put himself at risk.

“I can’t think of anything specific other than some instances that I have been sworn to secrecy about,” his father, Greg Barwis, said. “It’s not about him getting notoriety. It’s about helping other people.”

Judy describes Mike as the kind of caring and compassionate person who would do anything to help someone, but she was similarly reserved when asked to speak about specific examples.

“Somebody could walk into my house with Armani shoes on and say they don’t have any money and Mike would give them the last dollar in his pocket,” Judy said.

Throughout his life, Barwis has worked in jobs that allowed him to shape young people’s lives.