Mom's Memory Inspires C-F All-Stater
January 9, 2021
By Doug Donnelly
Special for Second Half
MONTGOMERY – Jocelynn Nicholls was first drawn to volleyball in grade school.
Over the years, the Camden-Frontier senior has made the transition from being a wild swinging middle-schooler to an apprehensive freshman on the varsity to an all-state volleyball player headed to Trine University to play the sport she loves.
“I fell in love with volleyball when I was in the fourth grade,” she said. “I’ve played basketball and softball, but nothing feels like volleyball.”
It wasn’t always easy for Nicholls, who has overcome the loss of her mother Amy Nicholls during her sophomore season to become a tower of strength for the Redskins.
“She’s been through a lot, but she’s a tough kid and is going to make something of herself,” said Camden-Frontier coach Dawn Follis.
Nicholls’ mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the early part of 2018. By volleyball season that year, her mom had become very ill, enough that Nicholls missed a match when her mom went to the hospital. That season, her mom lost her battle; she died on a game day.
Nicholls had asked her mom earlier that day if she should play.
“I said to her ‘What do you want me to do?’,” said Nicholls, who was 15 at the time. “She squeezed my hand and told me to go. She couldn’t talk, so we had a way to communicate through squeezing my hand. She wanted me to play.”
About halfway through the match against Pittsford, Nicholls felt something she had never experienced before – a feeling, almost like a change in her body.
“My aunt was at the game watching me,” she said. “She even noticed the change in me. I got home after the game, and I figured out the news.”
Her mom, an English professor and dean of the Jannen School of Arts and Sciences at Trine University in nearby Angola, Ind., had passed away.
Nicholls turned to volleyball to help her through. Using her mom as her strength, she didn’t miss another match. Volleyball has always been a big part of her life.
“I’ve come a long way since my freshman year,” she said. “Being pulled up to the varsity was a huge thing. It was a great opportunity for me to grow as a player. It really opened my eyes.”
After that season on the varsity, she started playing club volleyball, first at a club in Hillsdale, then at Team Pineapple Volleyball Club in Angola, which is less than a half hour from her home.
"Once I started playing for other teams, I started playing up, against older girls,” she said. “When I was a freshman I was playing against a bunch of seniors.”
Follis and the Redskins have built a small-school powerhouse in south central Michigan, just north of the Michigan-Indiana state line. Nicholls helped Camden-Frontier to a school-record 40 wins that sophomore season and they won 36 matches and the school’s first Regional crown in 2019. This fall’s was another outstanding season for the Redskins, who went 25-3 and won a fourth-straight District title. Over Nicholls’ four varsity seasons, Camden-Frontier won more than 100 matches.
Nicholls had a great season in 2020, earning first-team all-state honors from the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association. Playing about half the matches the Redskins typically play in a season, she recorded 395 kills, averaging 4.34 per set, and accumulated 141 digs. Two of her teammates, junior Dakota Sigler and senior Heather Shaw, made the all-state honorable mention list. (Camden-Frontier fell 3-2 to Lansing Christian in a Regional Semifinal on Nov. 10; Lansing Christian will play in the Quarterfinals on Tuesday.)
Follis said Nicholls knows how to use her height to her advantage.
“She’s very tall and very athletic and aggressive,” Follis said. “She’s worked really hard on her game. When she was in middle school, she was tall and had this wild swing. She played all of the time, and it shows.”
Nicholls stands 6-foot tall. She had 70 blocks and block assists this season.
“I’ve always been really tall,” she said. “I think by the fifth grade I was taller than any boy in my class.
“I always knew I was tall and that would benefit me, but I knew that wasn’t going to be enough. I worked hard to increase my vertical. I put in a lot of time. I definitely try and use that to my advantage."
Follis said Nicholls did use her height to her advantage, something not all tall players do.
“She’s a hitter, and she really jumps well,” said Follis. “In high school she has the ability to change the game with her hitting. She’s a game-changer.”
At the Camden-Frontier matches over the past couple of years, there was typically a large contingent of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins watching Nicholls and her teammates play. That is one of the reasons she chose Trine – her family will be able to see her play.
“I want to be close to my family,” she said. “I’d rather be 20 minutes away than 12 hours away. Family is a big deal for me.”
Nicholls said she loves to hang out with family and friends but doesn’t have time for a lot of other interests outside of sports. She likes to stay busy, no matter what sports season it is. Right now, she is lifting and running on nice days and staying ready for the upcoming basketball season. She’s been on the varsity softball team since her freshman season as well.
“I am fulltime, 100-percent motivated to focus on my game,” she said.
At Trine she plans on majoring in exercise science with the hopes of going into physical therapy or something in the athletic field.
“I want to be there for my mom,” she said. “It’s a big opportunity that I will even get to play there. That’s where I wanted to be.”
Trine is a big part of the Nicholls family. Not only was her mom a professor at the school, but she also graduated from Trine. Her dad Scott and brother Mason also went to Trine. Jocelynn started going there at a young age and impressed the volleyball coach years ago.
“When I was a freshman, I went there for a camp and the coach told me if I continued to work hard, I would get a (scholarship) offer,” she recalled.
Losing her mother a couple of years ago, Nicholls said, completely changed her outlook on life.
“It provided me an opportunity to grow,” she said. “It makes me want to give 100 percent all of the time and not take anything for granted. You are not promised tomorrow.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Camden-Frontier’s Jocelynn Nicholls holds up her team’s District title trophy from this season. (Middle) Nicholls serves during a match this fall. (Photos by Doug Donnelly.)
Oakland Standing Tall Among State's Elite
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
October 11, 2018
Pontiac Notre Dame Prep capped the first fall volleyball season in MHSAA history in 2007 with a Class B championship – the first won in any class by an Oakland County high school. Bloomfield Hills Marian in Class A and Birmingham Roeper in Class D also reached Finals that fall.
Before that season, teams from the county had reached title matches just six times since 1975-76, when the MHSAA began sponsoring a postseason tournament for the sport. (Volleyball began as a winter sport and moved to fall for the 2007-08 school year.) But since Notre Dame won its 2007 title, Oakland County teams have won seven more MHSAA championships: Notre Dame Prep two more in Class B, Marian two in Class A, and Novi – led by 2017 Miss Volleyball Award winner Erin O’Leary – won the last three Class A titles.
Which leads us to this season. Of the 10 nominees for Miss Volleyball, an unprecedented five are from Oakland County: Lake Orion’s Paige Briggs, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep’s Maddy Chinn and Natalie Risi, Bloomfield Hills Marian’s Madison Dowd and Troy’s Jessica Robinson. Of the top four vote-getters for last season’s award, three were from Oakland County.
Chinn and Risi’s coach, Betty Wroubel, who is third on the all-time list for coaching victories (1,422 before this season), said there are a number of reasons why teams in her county are competing at a higher level recently.
“For a long time the programs on the west side were way ahead of us,” Wroubel said. “Some of it is travel (teams). But much of it is competition. In July we do a camp to get the players in the area more involved. Marian led the way for so long, and others are catching up. Also, the kids are getting taller. They’re stronger. Schools in the area offer more conditioning for the players.”
Before this season, Notre Dame Prep had three past candidates for Miss Volleyball. In the fall of 2007, Molly (Coldren) Campbell finished second in the voting to Kyndra Abron of Livonia Churchill. Four years ago, Katherine Carlson became the first and only Notre Dame Prep player to win the award.
Wroubel said both Chinn and Risi stack up well when compared to the other fine players who have come through her program.
“(Maddy) has something going,” Wroubel said. “In those big moments, when your team needs it, she thrives. When the game is on the line, she’s there. She understands the game, like a coach does. What she’s improved on is hitting a variety of shots. She can put the ball down. Even as a freshman, she had that ability.”
At 6-foot-3, Chinn, an outside hitter, is a dominant player at the net. Risi’s versatility sets her apart from the competition. At 6 foot, she also is positioned as an outside hitter – and this season she’s also become one of the team’s top setters.
“Natalie is a calming force,” Wroubel said. “She could be a setter on any team. She’s quiet. You won’t notice her on the court sometimes. When you do take notice, you can’t take your eyes off of her. She’s so smooth.
“I feel bad that they’re in the same class. I don’t know who I’m going to vote for.”
Statistically, Chinn has impressed with 446 kills and 96 blocks. Risi has 140 aces with a .430 hitting percentage. Risi’s aces already make the MHSAA single-season record book list in that category, and Chinn is on pace to make the kills list.
Mayssa Cook is in her first season as head coach at Marian and her setter, Madison Dowd, is a nominee. Cook played volleyball at Dearborn High before graduating in 2003 and playing four years in college, the last two at Wayne State. Cook began coaching the freshmen team at Dearborn a year after graduating from high school. She built the program at Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard as she guided the Irish to a District title in 2013, her first season as head coach, and the school’s first Regional title the next season – before Gabriel Richard then won the Class B title in 2015 with a perfect 42-0 record. Cook (her maiden name is Bazzi) left Gabriel Richard after 2016 and took off from coaching as she gave birth to her first child.
Cook has seen the game change dramatically since the early 2000s. She was a three-sport athlete for the Pioneers, and even though she was a fine player, she said she’s not sure she would make varsity now with the skill set she possessed then.
“Look at the 10 nominees,” she said. “All 10 play travel. You don’t get to be a top-10 player by playing three months. I played three sports (in high school). I played travel soccer. I played travel volleyball but I didn’t play 11 months of volleyball.
“Ten years ago, many schools on this side of the state would go to the west side to get competition. It’s a lot more balanced now. There are still great teams over there, but we don’t have to travel three hours to play the good teams. We can go 10 minutes.”
Dowd, a four-year varsity player and a two-year captain, typifies a well-rounded student-athlete. She has a 4.2 grade-point average, and on the court not only is she a fine player but a valuable teammate. She has 808 assists and 217 digs, and her 1,531 assists as a junior rank ninth in MHSAA history.
“A lot of it has to do with her personality,” Cook said. “She’s not the loudest person on the court. She has a calming presence. She leads by example and is that player who makes her teammates better.”
Dowd has received a number of scholarship offers for volleyball but has yet to decide where she will go after this school year is done.
Over the years Marian has had a host of players nominated for Miss Volleyball, which was created in 2003. That season Erin Poglits was the first Marian player to make the list. Alexandra Cocklin was named Miss Volleyball in 2009 and her teammate, Rachel Charles, was second in the voting. The next season Marian’s Alexandra Lovell finished second and her teammate, Alessandra Dietz, was fourth. Before this season, somewhat surprisingly, the last Marian player to make the top 10 was Jessie Kopmeyer in 2013.
Jessica Robinson (6-2) from Troy and Paige Briggs (5-10) from Lake Orion also are accomplished outside hitters.
Robinson is the first player from Troy to be a nominee and entering this season she had 1,174 kills and 588 digs for her career. She had 740 kills as a junior to rank among the most successful single-season hitters in state volleyball history.
“In college (Robinson has committed to University of Michigan), she’ll be a middle hitter,” said Troy coach Tom Vigilant. “But for us, we have her on the outside. She plays all around. If I need an attacker on the back, I can go to her. But she does what she does best, and that’s at the net.”
Lake Orion’s only other nominee, Courtney Wightman, came in 2015. Lake Orion is one of those Oakland County programs that has made significant strides in the past decade. Its 2011 team reached the Class A Final before losing to Rockford.
Briggs suffered a back injury last season, which limited her effectiveness. Lake Orion coach Tony Scavarda said she has fully recovered and helped make the Dragons one of the top teams in the county.
“She’s made a huge impact for us,” he said. “She passes from the back row, plays good defense and she’s got good leaping ability. She does everything well. At 5-10, she jumps really well and is smart with the ball. We have other players her size who can’t do what she does.”
Briggs is close behind Chinn with 444 kills and is among the leaders in digs with 340. She’s also on pace to make the single-season kills record book list.
Lake Orion lost to Clarkston in the District last season, but with a healthy Briggs the Dragons are off to a 41-4 start and looking for their first District title since 2015.
Scavarda, in his fifth season as head coach, said it is a bit surprising to have five players from the same county in the running for Miss Volleyball, but adds that it is another indication of how strong the level of play has been in Oakland County over the last decade.
“Oakland County is always pretty strong,” he said. “Clarkston is always good, and they might be a little down this season but not by much. Marian and (Farmington Hills) Mercy are always good, too.”
Tom Markowski is a contributing writer for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Oakland County’s five Miss Volleyball candidates, from left: Lake Orion’s Paige Briggs, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep’s Maddy Chinn, Bloomfield Hills Marian’s Madison Dowd, Notre Dame Prep’s Natalie Risi and Troy’s Jessica Robinson. (Middle) Head shots: Chinn and Risi, Dowd, Robinson and Briggs. (Robinson action photo courtesy of C&G Newspapers; Briggs action photo courtesy of State Champs! Sports Network).