![Manistique celebrates its league championship-clinching win Oct. 4.](/sites/default/files/2022-10/221011_Manistique_2H.jpg)
Experienced Lineup Pacing Manistique's Strong Start, Pursuit of Big Finish
By
John Vrancic
Special for MHSAA.com
October 11, 2022
MANISTIQUE — After achieving its first major goal, the Manistique volleyball team is looking for more this season.
The Emeralds clinched the Mid-Peninsula Conference title Oct. 4 by sweeping Negaunee. They opened this fall by winning the Kingsford Invitational Aug. 20. Their only losses took place in semifinal matches against Kingsford at the Marquette Invitational on Sept. 24 and against Charlevoix in three sets at the Rayders’ invitational a week earlier.
Manistique has been receiving honorable mention in the state Division 3 rankings, and the Indian River Inland Lakes Invitational this Saturday will provide an opportunity to potentially see not only the Division 4 No. 4 Bulldogs, but also bigger schools like Alpena, Petoskey and Sault Ste. Marie.
All should be good preparation for the Emeralds, who host their Division 3 District next month after reaching the District Final a year ago.
“We’ve really improved from the opening tournament,” said coach Amy Nixon, who took over the program in 2008. “I think our offense has really stepped up and become more dominant. I think we’ll be able to run more plays which will help us down the road.
"Last year we lost to Iron Mountain in the District. Most of the girls are back from last season. We’re looking forward to finishing what we started last season.”
Senior Nora Cunningham and juniors Ella Schuetter and Emma Jones all earned all-region honors last season. Cunningham, an outside hitter, served for four aces in the Emeralds’ 25-15, 25-9, 25-9 triumph at Westwood two weeks ago.
"Serving is one of our strengths,” she said. “We make it a priority. When we serve well, good things happen."
Jones, a setter, collected 26 assists and senior Kelsey Muth added 11 subbing against the Patriots. Jones has eclipsed 1,000 career assists this season.
“I have a lot of responsibility as a setter,” said Jones. “I set up all the plays (in a 5-1 offense), although I definitely couldn’t do it without my teammates. I think our communication has gotten better during the season. I certainly think all the time we put in during the summer gave us confidence coming into this season.”
“Communication was a factor in our loss to Charlevoix,” added senior middle hitter Sarah McDaniel. “We just have to make sure to control what we can control. In our loss to Kingsford, I think we learned to pick up our communication when times are hard. We definitely have a lot of depth on this team. Everybody is ready to go.”
Schuetter, a middle hitter, has made all-tournament teams at Marquette and Charlevoix this season, joined by Jones at the latter.
“We have real good chemistry” she said. “The most improvement I’ve seen is our drive and commitment as a team.”
Tonight’s match against Gwinn is one of five remaining along with the Inland Lakes tournament before the regular season ends. The Emeralds did earn a sweep against Iron Mountain on Sept. 19 and could see the Mountaineers again in a District rematch, with Bark River-Harris, Gwinn and Menominee also in the bracket.
“We always want to play hard competition and show who we are,” Cunningham said. “Being able to overcome adversity has been a highlight to our season. That shows how much fight this team has.”
John Vrancic has covered high school sports in the Upper Peninsula since joining the Escanaba Daily Press staff in 1985. He is known most prominently across the peninsula for his extensive coverage of cross country and track & field that frequently appears in newspapers from the Wisconsin border to Lake Huron. He received the James Trethewey Award for Distinguished Service in 2015 from the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
PHOTO Manistique celebrates its league championship-clinching win Oct. 4. (Photo courtesy of the Manistique volleyball program.)
![The Gladwin volleyball team finished 29-10 this season.](/sites/default/files/2022-11/221114_Gladwin_2H.jpg)
Team of the Month: Gladwin Volleyball
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
November 15, 2022
Tony Wetmore hadn’t arrived yet the last time Gladwin’s varsity volleyball team won a Jack Pine Conference championship. But he had a trustworthy witness able to give a first-hand account of what his Flying G’s have been chasing over the last 40+ years.
Wetmore’s mother and junior varsity coach Jane Wetmore, then Jane Huber – played on that last league championship volleyball team. She also was the one who got her son into coaching; he started his Gladwin tenure as the freshman volleyball coach teaching a sport he admittedly didn’t know much about himself.
But Mom clearly was onto something.
Less than a decade later, Wetmore has just finished up his sixth season as Gladwin’s varsity coach – and his team has finished its first league championship season since 1978, earning the MHSAA/Applebee’s “Team of the Month” honor for October.
Gladwin has been hovering in contention much of the last decade, but this team had all the ingredients to end the drought. Start with senior outside hitter Erin Breault and senior setter Delaney Reynolds – Breault broke the school’s single-season and career kills records this season, and Reynolds broke the same records for assists. Additionally, Breault led the JPC in kills, and junior middle Lizzie Haines led the league in hitting percentage.
But that high-caliber talent also was surrounded by several contributors who helped Gladwin push past longtime nemesis Beaverton and into the top spot.
“I felt like the whole season I could split the team in half, and one team could take first in the conference and the other team could take like fourth. I just felt like we were that deep where we were good and we could practice at a pretty high level, which was really cool,” Wetmore said.
“It’s obviously linked together, the assist record breaker and the kill record breaker on the same team,” he added. “And I think the thing that really pushed us over the edge this year is we had so many different attackers that were really, really good. My outside hitter Erin broke the record, she led the league in kills. My middle hitter led the league in hitting percentage. Both of those are reflective of our ability to get the ball to our attackers, which is the setter’s main job – but our back row played really well also all season, so a super-big team effort for all of them.”
The Flying G’s were able to win the Jack Pine in large part because they became the first league opponent since 2018 to defeat annual power Beaverton – Gladwin swept the pair of matches against its rival, and those remain Beaverton’s only league defeats over the last five seasons.
The Flying G’s had been building toward this. They won their District in 2018, and then finished second in the JPC in 2019. The team was only .500 in 2020, but came back to finish 29-5 last season and 29-10 this fall.
Wetmore brought Breault, Reynolds and senior libero Delaney Conley up to varsity as sophomores that 2020 season. Breault, Reynolds and Haines earned all-region honors this season, and Wetmore was named his region’s Coach of the Year by the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association. (Conley, a standout softball player, has signed to continue playing that sport at Saginaw Valley State.)
More quickly than hoped, of course, Gladwin made its season-ending exit in District play again. But the Flying G’s don’t plan on the prior good times coming to an end.
True, the seniors who will graduate are part of a class that’s been long-anticipated across all sports – another example this fall has been the football team, 12-0 and playing in a Division 5 Semifinal on Saturday.
Wetmore expects his volleyball seniors’ impact to last as younger players who watched them succeed this fall take their turns on the court with a larger idea of what’s possible.
“(It’s) just getting over the hump. Talk about our goals – every year trying to win the conference championship but we can’t get there. Every year since 2018, trying to beat Beaverton but we can’t do it. Districts, we’d won every once in a while … we won in 2011, so from 2011-15 we couldn’t get over it, but in (20)16 we got a District and then we got the next two,” Wetmore said. “When you break that barrier, it makes it easier to realize you can do things.”
Past Teams of the Month, 2022-23
September: Negaunee girls tennis - Report