MGoBlogs: Volleyball, Vol. I, No. 4

All Hallows Eve
WEDNESDAY | OCTOBER 31, 2007
Halloween comes but once a year for the Michigan volleyball team, but if athletic trainer Wil Turner had his way, it might come two or three times a year.

For four seasons now, the Michigan volleyball team has arrived at practice a little early on Halloween to see what Wil (pictured with coach Mark Rosen and assistant Gregg Whitis) has dressed up as. The last three years he has been a Pirate, Caesar, and one of the Village People. This year he chose cultural icon Flava Flav, winning the Michigan Athletic Department costume contest in the process. Wil's costume cost around $20, with a clock from Target, accessories from a Halloween store, and clothes from his adidas days at Oregon State.

The rest of the team kept their costumes at home, but a few will partake in the Halloween festivities after practice is done. Liz Raschke, dressed as a reaper, plans to roam the streets of Ann Arbor trick-or-treating with a giant scythe. She took her costume out for a test run in the Academic Center last week for some reaping and got kudos from student-athletes on a number of teams. Stesha Selsky has raved about her Cruella DeVil costume for weeks and plans to strut her stuff -- possibly with a friend dressed as a dalmatian. Lyndsay Miller dressed as Lara Croft this weekend, and Kerry Hance was a pharmacist.

Some of the athletes have big plans on Halloween that don't deal with candy, tricking or treating. Sarah Draves is in for a viewing of The Grapes of Wrath for class. Lexi Zimmerman, Maggie Busch and Cassie Petoskey are off to Activism Night in the Modern Language Building for a class. Karlee Bruck plans to go to class and then read. Party animals, all.

At least the players can harken back to the days when they could enjoy the holiday in proper fashion. Jackie Nissen remembers the heady days of elementary school when she and a friend dressed as babies. Petoskey wore a homemade leopard costume once, and Hance remembers dressing as a green M&M. Draves wasn't big on dressing up, but she used to watch scary movies, including Jurassic Park, and still catches herself checking behind shower curtain for velociraptors now and again.

As for the Rosens, Mark and Leisa will take sons Cameron and Brady trick or treating. Brady will be Darth Vader, while Cameron, going as a baseball player, is especially excited to wear the eye black, which he calls "baseball stuff."

With one year until the next Halloween practice, Turner is no doubt thinking up his next costume and looking forward to defending his "best costume" award.

The Academic Challenge
TUESDAY | OCTOBER 30, 2007
Competition extends far away from the gym floor for Michigan volleyball. It winds way out of Cliff Keen Arena and into the classrooms, labs, libraries and study halls on campus. That is the field of battle on which the Michigan volleyball academic challenge takes place.

In order to cement the idea of the "student-athlete" at Michigan, the academic challenge pits teams of volleyball players against each other each semester. The team with the highest average GPA is the victor. The prize is dinner with the coaching staff on Main Street (excluding some of the ridiculously expensive restaurants, because, though generous, Mark Rosen is not crazy).

This semester three teams -- captained by two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree Sarah Draves (pictured), Academic All-Big Ten honoree Liz Rachke and Megan Bower -- have waged academic war through two months. The teams were picked in a draft held prior to the school year with the three captains designated because theirs was the winning team the previous go-round.

Raschke, heading Team BIRD, picked first in the first round and chose sleeper Wyman Khuu -- the team's manager -- off the board. Khuu was included in the draft to help balance numbers and was chosen as Raschke's secret weapon on a team with U-M Athletic Academic Achievement Award honoree Katie Bruzdzinski, National Honor Society member Jackie Nissen and high school honor roll member Lexi Zimmerman.

Draves chose second and selected Academic All-Big Ten honoree Beth Karpiak as her first pick to Team SILT. Draves and Karpiak compete in the classroom next to Cassie Petoskey and high school National Honor Society one-two punch Karlee Bruck and Maggie Busch. Team BAMF, led by Bower, had the last pick of the first round and used it on two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree Stesha Selsky. Selsky and Bower headline a team that also features two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree Lyndsay Miller, U-M Athletic Academic Achievement Award recipient Kerry Hance and Veronica Rood.

When pressed about the origins of the teams' names, players stifled laughs and tried not to let their inside jokes leak too far. Let's just say that Team BIRD and Team SILT are archrivals and take shots at each squad's captain, while Team BAMF remains above the fray but has a very specific opinion of its personality.

The teams will stay together until second semester, when the winning team will be broken up and its members designated captains for the new challenge. Draves, Raschke and Bower enjoyed a delicious evening at Gratzi for being the winners last semester, dining on fried foods with appetizers and dessert.

The thought of victory already has Petoskey dreaming of victory. "I'd really want to go to Real Seafood," she said to no one in particular, as the teams continued their season-long trash talk about who is the smartest team in the gym.

State Pride Series Renewed
THURSDAY | OCTOBER 25, 2007
In 1990, Michigan and Michigan State agreed to begin an annual competition between the two schools called the "State Pride Series." A state of Michigan flag bearing the motto "Tuebor" or "I Will Defend" serves a symbol for the U-M/MSU rivalry. It flew above the State Capitol in Lansing on Sept. 18, 1990, and the winner of the season series retains possession of the flag for a year.

Since 1990, both programs have had three separate head coaches, and somewhere in the rivalry the original flag was misplaced. Prior to the 2005 season, Mark Rosen was cleaning out old volleyball files and came across the flag in the bottom of a file cabinet. The flag was dusty but otherwise in mint condition, and it gave Rosen an idea. A do-it-yourself enthusiast, Rosen tracked down a special wooden case for the flag and assembled a State Pride Series trophy that held the original flag and sported plaques bearing the annual results of the in-state rivalry.

That year, Michigan swept the Spartans and claimed Rosen's trophy for their own, displaying it in the team's locker room. There it rested for a year until Michigan State rebounded and took the trophy to Lansing following the 2006 season. The Spartans housed the trophy in their own locker room in Jenison Field House, where it has remained since.

Third-year Michigan State head coach Kathy George was not aware of the history of the State Pride Series but learned first-hand in her first season how intense it can be. "In my first year I was blown away by the hype surrounding the rivalry," said George, leading up the Wolverines/Spartans match this week. "Even being from Western Michigan I had no idea the rivalry was this intense. It's a match that has a lot of importance in the state, and we always get up for it."

Michigan leads the all-time competition, 9-8, having won four of the last five State Pride Series. The Wolverines swept the Spartans in the first match this season at Cliff Keen Arena, meaning that in order to win the State Pride Series for 2007, Michigan State needs to sweep Michigan and score more total points than the Wolverines over the six-game set. Only four times in the 17-year history of the competition has it come down to total points, and the Wolverines will do their best to make the tiebreaker a moot point this season.

The Big Ten at the Midway Point
MONDAY | OCTOBER 22, 2007
At the midway point of the 20-match Big Ten season, the Wolverines find themselves with a 5-5 record in-conference (17-5 overall) and in a three-way tie for fourth place in the conference standings with Minnesota and Indiana. No, that is not a typo. Indiana, 1-19 in the Big Ten last season, is 5-5 in-conference and 14-8 overall this year and is further proof of the overall parity of the Big Ten, which has four teams currently in the top 22 in the nation and three others that have either been ranked or received votes in the polls this year.

"The Big Ten Conference is wide open at this point," said Mark Rosen. "The top two teams -- Penn State and Wisconsin -- have separated themselves, but after that it's wide open. The season can go either way for every team, and we are putting an equal amount of emphasis on every match we play because on any given night any team in the Big Ten can beat another."

Michigan entered the season picked to finish sixth in the preseason coaches poll, but a 13-0 record and a No. 10 national ranking to start the year showed the Wolverines were for real. Since then, Michigan's only losses have come to Big Ten teams, which Rosen feels speaks volumes about the strength of the conference from top to bottom.

"The Big Ten as a whole did very well in the non-conference schedule," said Rosen, "and now we're beating each other up week in and week out. Our conference is comparable to the Pac-10 right now. Our level of play is probably above most other conferences in the country right now."

As for his squad, Rosen has been pleased with his team's overall effort this year and is especially proud of the team's passing and the play of its middles. "Our passing and ball control has been consistently solid this season," said Rosen. "Our serve receive has been excellent all year long. Our middles are hitting very high numbers, with Beth Karpiak (pictured) being a bright spot and Lyndsay Miller putting up good numbers. Our good middle play also speaks to good setting from Lexi Zimmerman, who deserves credit for some of our high hitting percentage numbers in the middle."

Michigan will have a difficult stretch run, with six road matches and four home contests during the final five weeks of the regular season. "Every match in the second half is important," said Rosen. "We are excited that we have room to move up and position ourselves for a high conference finish. We want to finish the year on a high note and get a good berth into the NCAA Tournament."