Five Fewer Volleyball Days?

December 12, 2017

When 90 percent of one of our key constituent groups has the same opinion, it’s worth talking about – even if the topic is a sacred cow.

This fall, 89.6 percent of 580 survey respondents told the Michigan High School Athletic Association they favor a week earlier end to the girls volleyball season.

Even more – 91.7 percent – favor starting practice two days earlier in August, the same day practice starts for football.

More than 98 percent of those respondents were local athletic directors, and each class (A, B, C and D) was almost equally represented.

If girls volleyball ended a week earlier, it would always conclude before the start of firearm deer hunting season and have a weekend largely to itself, in contrast to the current calendar that sees the Girls Volleyball Finals competing with the Girls Swimming & Diving Finals, the 8-Player Football Finals and 16 Semifinal games in the 11-Player Football Tournament. It’s a weekend of 100 audio and video broadcast hours, among the MHSAA’s very busiest weekends of the entire school year.

The MHSAA’s Girls Volleyball Tournament is the latest finishing high school association Girls Volleyball Tournament in the country, sharing that distinction with nine other states. Compared to our neighbors, the tournament in Michigan ends a week later than the Girls Volleyball Tournament ends in Illinois and Ohio, and two weeks later than the same tournament ends in Indiana and Wisconsin. Michigan’s girls volleyball season is currently one day shorter than in Ohio but four days longer than in Indiana, eight days longer than in Illinois, and 12 days longer than in Wisconsin.

Whether or not girls or boys basketball seasons eventually move up or back or flip-flop, the start and end of girls volleyball season are ripe for review, according to a large portion of local-level administrators. The opposite position is taken by the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association, which has countered the online survey with a position paper that points out how much the girls volleyball season was shortened after girls volleyball moved from the winter season to the fall.

The Representative Council’s recent decision to switch the starting dates for girls and boys basketball seasons in the 2018-19 school year diminishes the urgency to decide between these different points of view.

Believe it: Mercy Nets 2nd Finals Title with 'Unbelievable' Comeback

By Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com

November 18, 2023

BATTLE CREEK – Loretta Vogel had a single word to describe Farmington Hills Mercy’s five-set victory Saturday in the Division 1 Volleyball Final: Unbelievable.

“When we played Marian, to me, that was everything for me,” the Mercy coach said of her team’s Quarterfinal win over the 2022 Division 1 champion. “We planned, we knew what we wanted to do, and we went in there and it was three games – bing, bang, boom, here we go.

“Then it’s like, ‘We’re going to Battle Creek.’ We did our scouting reports, then to get in the Finals, to be down two games, such adversity, unbelievable. I don’t know if it’s going to hit me for six months, what we accomplished. It was unbelievable.”

After dropping the first two sets, Mercy came back to defeat Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern 13-25, 23-25, 25-21, 25-22, 15-12 at Kellogg Arena, adding a second championship to the program’s first won in 2019.

The Marlins’ Kate Kalczynski (2) connects on a kill attempt with Kendall Hopewell (9) and Riley Loehfelm (16) putting up a block.The Marlins finished the season with a 32-15-3 record and entered the postseason outside the top 10 in Division 1. With just two seniors on the roster, three sophomores in the starting lineup and a freshman as one of their leading hitters, one can start to see how Vogel arrived at “unbelievable.”

Of course, on Saturday, they didn’t play like a young, unranked team, especially after going down two sets.

“I think we were a little timid in the first set,” said Mercy junior setter Campbell Flynn, who is committed to Nebraska. “It was our first time actually being in the Finals, so we were all a little nervous. But I think we stayed composed later in the set, and also kept rallies alive.”

Flynn put on a masterclass in game management, finishing with 41 assists, but doing so much more than that.

“Campbell Flynn took over the match,” Northern coach Valerie Lurye said. “We put a lot of our gameplan to making sure (Flynn) couldn’t score, and forcing her to do things like setting other kids. And the other kids showed up. … We forced her to have to do something different, which is what we wanted to do. We did really well Set 2, then Set 3 and 4 she caught on. She’s going to Nebraska for a simple reason, and that’s because she’s able to be someone who takes over the match and understands, ‘Hey, I can’t dump the ball right now. I have other people I have to go to.’ Her movement of the ball is what really threw us off our gameplan.”

The biggest beneficiary of Campbell’s ball movement was freshman Kate Kalczynski, who finished the match with a game-high 25 kills. Five of those kills came during the fifth set.

FHN’s Madalin Hersman (6) and Flynn meet at the net. “Kate, she played amazing today,” Flynn said. “I literally just had to set her the ball and she got kills. I’m so proud of her. She’s only a freshman, but she played a big role. I was just so beyond proud of her.”

Cree Hollier added 10 kills for Mercy, while Angie Butler – playing with a torn meniscus suffered over the summer – had seven kills and 22 digs. One of Butler’s kills came off a wild scramble late in the fourth set and gave her team a 20-18 lead. It was the first bit of distance Mercy was able to create in what had been a back-and-forth set – which the Marlins went on to win.

Vogel said her team started to play like it had nothing to lose after the first two sets, and that flurry certainly backed up that assertion.

The change in attitude and energy didn’t go unnoticed on the other side of the net.

“I would say they just really turned up their energy,” Northern senior Elana Erickson said. “The first two sets, they didn’t have a lot of energy and they couldn’t really serve and pass. They really turned it up though in the third, fourth and fifth set.”

Erickson, who will play at Western Michigan next year, finished with 22 kills and 27 digs to lead Northern (45-8-1). Kendall Hopewell added 16 kills, 11 digs and seven total blocks, while Lexie Stotenbur had 41 assists. 

Jillian Collins had 24 digs for Mercy, while Flynn added 15.

Click for the full box score.

PHOTOS (Top) Farmington Hills Mercy surrounds Campbell Flynn (28) in celebration Saturday at Kellogg Arena. (Middle) The Marlins’ Kate Kalczynski (2) connects on a kill attempt with Kendall Hopewell (9) and Riley Loehfelm (16) putting up a block. (Below) FHN’s Madalin Hersman (6) and Flynn meet at the net. (Photos by Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)