Mruzik Set for Season of Opportunities

August 15, 2019

By Keith Dunlap
Special for Second Half

FARMINGTON HILLS – Like a lot of seniors, Jess Mruzik of Farmington Hills Mercy will enjoy a lot of perks that come with the final year of high school.

The first such perk will be that she will get to miss almost three weeks from late August to mid-September. 

A member of the United States Under-18 Girls Youth National volleyball team, Mruzik and the rest of the U.S. squad will be heading to Egypt from Sept. 5-14 to compete at the World Championships.

Mruzik actually will head first to Anaheim, Calif., on Aug. 28 for a couple of days of training before the team flies over to Cairo.

But don’t worry, there will still be a way for her to keep up with what’s going on in her classrooms at Mercy.

“A lot of our stuff for where we turn in our homework, that’s all online,” she said. “So it should be pretty easy for me to keep up.”

But if Mruzik has her way and achieves all that she wants, getting to represent her country and go for a gold medal won’t be the only perk she’ll enjoy over the coming months.

There are rightfully a lot of expectations for Mercy on the volleyball court, since the Marlins return nine players from last year’s team that finished 52-3 and reached the Division 1 Semifinals before falling to eventual champion Lake Orion.

Leading the way will be Mruzik, who is almost like having nine returning players all in one.

“Obviously the national team will be fun playing with girls all across the country, but I’m really excited for this high school season,” Mruzik said. “Everybody is so much better. We are all super hungry this year.”

Having the wondrously talented Mruzik already is a boon for Mercy. But add that she and the rest of the team are beyond motivated to bring home the first volleyball title in school history, and that’s a bad outlook for opponents.

A 6-foot-2 outside hitter who brings thunder from all sides of the net, Mruzik was named the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year last year after collecting 420 kills, a .514 kill percentage, 165 digs and 65 aces.

“Jess is just the real thing,” Mercy head coach Loretta Vogel said. “Her athleticism, she’s just a natural.”

Mruzik comes from a basketball family but found out her gifts were in volleyball after taking up the sport in fourth grade. She already has built up a diverse volleyball resume with her experiences on the world, national, club and high school stages.

Mruzik last year captained the national team that won a gold medal at the NORCECA Continental Championships in Honduras, and she was named MVP of the tournament.

“People really take volleyball serious overseas,” Mruzik said. “Playing with Team USA, you get a taste of that. It’s not the club world. These people are playing for money and will do whatever it takes to win. A lot of times in club, you play the same people over and over again. You know how one girl is going to play and how one team is going to play. Internationally, you have to make changes on the fly because they play volleyball differently than you.”

Vogel said she first saw Mruzik at one of the coach’s camps. But after seeing her perform so well at the camp, Vogel was disappointed to learn that Mruzik was still in eighth grade at the time and not an incoming freshman.

Vogel has seen Mruzik get better and better during her first three years at Mercy.

“She had a very complete package for a young lady,” Vogel said. “But I think the strength of her game each year when she comes back to me in the fall, everything she does is stronger. Her attacking is stronger and very precise on everything she wants to do.”

Mruzik will be graduating early, in December, and will attempt to enroll at University of Michigan in January.

If she can’t enroll early – the university can take only a limited number of athletes who wish to do so – she’ll take classes at a community college and start training with her future Michigan teammates.

Even with her national team opportunities, Mruzik loves the high school experience too much to not play her final season, even adding that if Mercy had won the Division 1 championship last year she still would have come back to play high school as a senior.

“High school season is a fun time of the year,” Mruzik said. “I’m super close with the girls on our team, and we all mesh really well. That’s definitely something that helps, and there’s not a lot of team drama.”

PHOTOS: (Top) Farmington Hills Mercy’s Jess Mruzik takes a big swing during her team’s Division 1 Semifinal last season against Lake Orion. (Middle) Mruzik (33) and her teammates huddle after a point at Kellogg Arena.

Fear the Socks: Cadillac Volleyball Success Never Out of Style

By Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com

September 22, 2023

Cadillac’s girls volleyball team is quite accustomed to getting flack from opposing teams’ student sections about their socks.

Northern Lower PeninsulaThat’s not likely to continue much longer though, thanks to the Vikings’ performance on the court and major college teams becoming similarly equipped.

And their new warm-up shirts tell it all. 

“My team has always worn knee socks,” said 23-year veteran Cadillac coach Michelle Brines. “So people will make fun of the team, or they’ll cheer ‘put your socks down’ and this kind of thing. 

“This year we finally got shirts saying ‘Fear the Socks,’” she continued. “The knee socks were in back in the day, and we’ve always worn them.”

Now college powerhouse clubs like Texas and Nebraska wear knee socks. The Cornhuskers just went back to them last season — a year calumniating with an appearance in the national championship match. Nebraska and Texas regularly make runs to and beyond the NCAA Elite Eight.

Under Brines, Cadillac too is used to deep postseason runs including six MHSAA Semifinal appearances. The Vikings made their first appearance in the Division 2 Final last November, falling to North Branch.  

Cadillac is off to a 17-3-2 start this fall preparing for Division 1 competition, as they moved into that division for this season. The Vikings have their sights on another Big North Conference championship too as they prepare for District play in Grand Haven at the end of October. Cadillac is 4-1 in league play.

Cassie Jenema sets for a teammate during a match. The Vikings have been led again this year by all-state middle hitter Carissa Musta. The 6-foot-4 senior is handling the pressure well. Teams celebrating a block of Musta’s hit are quickly shaken off, according to Brines.

“It’s got to be tough when somebody gets all crazy because they just blocked you, but Carissa is very composed,” Brines said. “She never comes off the floor. 

“She’s pretty darn good in the back row,” Brines continued. “I am very impressed with her growth and composure.”

Musta topped the 1,000-kill mark earlier this season and became the school’s career leader in blocks this week in a three-set win over Petoskey.

Senior Makenzie Johns, a 6-1 outside hitter, is also an offensive powerhouse for the Vikings. Senior setter Cassie Jenema comes through regularly with kills in addition to her strong defense and serving.

“We have 11 players on our team, and they all play an important role,” Brines noted. “Even though we have a few that really, really stand out, we are not going to be successful if we’re not all doing our job.”

The Vikings also regularly feature three sophomores: Ari Bryant, Grace Zubak and Sophia Clough. All three were on the freshman team last year because of the team’s depth.

Cadillac shared the Big North championship last year with Traverse City Central. They both suffered home losses to each other but picked up road wins. That trend has continued this year as Central handed Cadillac its lone league loss in five sets on the Vikings’ court. They will play again Oct. 4 in Traverse City.

Brines is pleased with her team’s progress at midseason. The Vikings host Alpena on Wednesday and then battle in the Portage Invitational.

“I have never had a season moving people around as much as I have,” Brines said. “I expect to see a lot of growth out of my team as we go into the second half of the season.”

Brines hopes the Vikings will make a run to the Final again this fall so she can become accustomed to a new routine.

“We finally broke through and won that (Friday Semifinal) night game and got to play the next day, which had never happened,” Brines recalled. “I didn’t really know what to do because usually I was going out for dinner with my team because we lost.”

***

The knee socks are the Vikings' signature also at the freshman and junior varsity levels. “We have all of our levels wear them — it is kind of our thing,” Brines pointed out. “When we walk in we have knee socks, people know we’re Cadillac.

“It’s kind of fun,” she continued. “I am old school.”

Ari Bryant keeps the ball in play.Crew socks are allowed in practice, however. Brines and the Vikings seriously considered getting away from their long-standing tradition.   

“I used to make them wear them in practice,” Brines said. “One of my players that went on to coach some college and be a head coach herself said ‘Coach, you can’t do (stop wearing them) because that’s what you kind of always done and nobody else wears knee socks.’”

A spokesperson for Nebraska said there’s no real reason Nebraska went back to wearing long socks beyond player preference, and that it seems like that trend is coming back in volleyball. 

“Very cool,” Brines said with a smile when she learned of the Cornhuskers response. “So basically, we never went out of style.”

Tom SpencerTom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.

PHOTOS (Top) Cadillac's McKenzie Johns unloads on an attempt during a match. (Middle) Cassie Jenema sets for a teammate during a match. (Below) Ari Bryant keeps the ball in play. (Photos by Marc Vieau/Cadillac News).