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.
Dakota's Snyder a High Flier
November 19, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
BATTLE CREEK – Carli Snyder was easy to find for a few reasons in the minutes before Macomb Dakota finished its first championship run Saturday at Kellogg Arena.
She was the only member of her team warming up in a power blue T-shirt, for example. Then there were the secret handshakes, each one different for every other starter on the floor.
But the most obvious show-stopper was simply the ridiculousness with which the 6-foot-1 Snyder smashed every ball into the wood below.
Especially at the high school level, an uncommon athlete is easy to spot. Snyder, a two-time all-stater who led the Cougars to the Class A title Saturday, is that athlete. She put the finishing touches over the weekend on one of the best hitting seasons in MHSAA volleyball history. And by this time next year, we might be calling her a two-time champion – and Miss Volleyball.
“Her sophomore year, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so (good).’ And then coming into this year, you didn't think she’d get that much better,” Dakota coach Tracie Ferguson said. “It’s just amazing how much she’s gotten better. I didn't think it was possible because she was so good last year.
“It’s just her mentality on the court and her leadership on the court and just keeping those girls calm and saying, ‘ We've got this.’ She’s grown so much since she was a freshman, on the mental part of it.”
Snyder gets a Second Half High 5 for leading her team to an unprecedented height. Unofficially, she finished this fall with 913 kills – good for seventh for one season in MHSAA history since the beginning of the rally scoring era in 2004-05. She had 31 kills in the Final, third most for a championship match since the scoring change. She also tallied 14 digs and three aces.
But this season, she took on something more that helped the Cougars go farther than they ever had during the 17-year history of the school.
“When I was a freshman in high school, we’d joke, ‘Freshman Carli lets out’ when I’d yell at the ref or something. I used to pull on my ears. I’d flip out if I did something wrong,” Snyder remembered Saturday. “This year, if I made a mistake, it’s next ball. Everybody knows I've got this, and it’s not the end of the world.
“A couple of years ago, it really seemed like it was.”
Dakota finished 19-27-3 the season before Snyder started high school. With her as a freshman, the Cougars improved to 28-17-4. Last fall, Dakota finished 32-13-2 and won a Regional title. And this season’s final record was 59-5.
That’s not to say Snyder was the only reason for the success. Half of Dakota’s starting lineup was seniors, and Snyder is one of four juniors talented enough to break into the main rotation. The rest of the lineup combined for 19 kills, and junior setter Megan Manuerski had 43 assists to also rank on the MHSAA Finals record book list.
But Snyder was the playmaker. Bedford managed only five blocks against Dakota. Snyder had only two errors on 54 attacks for an incredible .537 kill percentage.
“She’s pretty darn good. I wish she was a senior,” joked Bedford coach Jodi Manore, who has seen her share of big hitters over 28 seasons. “She was up over the top of us.”
Everyone knows by this point that Snyder is going to be on the attack just about every time. She had 50 of her team’s 94 kills on the weekend. Defenses are rarely caught off-guard. “It’s difficult. But I've played volleyball for a while so I’m not used to it, I’d say, but it’s kind of expected,” Snyder said. “And Megan, she puts the ball where sometimes the other team doesn't know. She holds the block so well."
Snyder will no doubt enter next season among favorites for that Miss Volleyball award, along with Battle Creek St. Philip hitter Sierra Hubbard-Neil among those who claimed championships over the weekend. Snyder also has already committed to play at the University of Florida, the Southeastern Conference champion this fall.
And she'll get plenty more chances to add to her legacy as the Cougars likely will enter next fall as Class A favorites again.
“Physically, yeah, she’s hitting the ball harder. She’s jumping higher. Absolutely,” Ferguson said. “But that’s going to continue as she grows.
“But the mentality part of it, she’s just such a great player to play with. You want her on your team. She’s just such a motivator and a confidence builder for the rest of them. She really led the way.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Macomb Dakota's Carli Snyder (5) celebrates a point with her team during Saturday's championship match. (Middle) Snyder swings on one of her many kills attempts against Temperance Bedford.