After program-defining win, Marian now waiting
Mayssa Cook and the Birmingham Marian volleyball team felt the two extremes of emotion over a 72-hour period last week.
Last Thursday, second-ranked Marian felt pure elation when it managed to defeat the defending state champions, top-ranked Farmington Hills Mercy, in a five-set battle for the D1 regional championship.
With their attention then turned to winning a state championship, the Mustangs felt the shocking sting of disappointment and sadness as their postseason run was put on hold Sunday due to an epidemic order by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
“It’s been two extremes. We had a big win and many that watched said it felt like a state championship match. We have worked so hard to get to where we have gotten and feel like we had a real fighting chance to win a state championship. It’s just a complete gut punch,” Cook, Marian’s coach, said. “Six days away from the state finals, we were hoping to play and now we are told we may not even have the opportunity.”
The current order requires a three-week shutdown of high school sports in order to slow the spread of COVID-19, but that time period is certainly not locked in stone. The MHSAA was in a similar position last winter when it had to stop the postseason basketball tournaments.
On Wednesday, the MHSAA released a schedule for postseason
tournaments if the order is indeed ended on Dec. 8. For volleyball, the quarterfinals will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 15. The semifinals and finals would then be held Dec. 17-19 at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek.
“I don’t trust they are going to open things back up in three weeks,” Cook said. “It happened last winter with those sports. They said it was postponed and before you know it, it was completely canceled. I don’t know that I am any more hopeful now.”
The difficulty for Cook, who is a nurse, is that Marian and Mercy played in front of 120 fans last Thursday at Troy Athens High School, to be told days later that she couldn’t even hold a practice in an empty gym.
“How can we go from 120 fans in a smaller gym on a Thursday night to you can’t even practice with your own team on Monday,” Cook asked. “Why couldn’t both teams just compete without fans and then live stream the match so everyone can watch from home? With it being so close to the end of the season, why couldn’t we just finish? It’s three matches. Let’s limit it in other ways, but let the kids play.”
Working on preventing the spread of COVID-19 has been a focus of the Marian team all season, which makes this latest stoppage harder for the Mustangs to swallow.
“We have been very strict about only hanging out with teammates and immediate family. The kids have avoided every other extracurricular activity and parties with people outside of the volleyball team simply because they know how serious this is and they didn’t want anything they do to jeopardize the team,” Cook said. “They are really feeling hurt right now. They followed all the rules and they feel punished and let down.”
The MHSAA began expanding crowd sizes for events like football and volleyball on Oct. 9, but new positive COVID-19 cases on that date with just 1,095. Last week, new cases hit an all-time one- day total of 8,516.
The epidemic order went into effect on Wednesday, but Marian’s Division 1 quarterfinal with Macomb Dakota was scheduled for Tuesday night. MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said playing the quarterfinals on Tuesday would have been “irresponsible” knowing a shutdown was taking place the next day.
Now, Marian waits.
The MHSAA says it is committed to finishing the fall tournaments in 2020, but Cook has her own concerns about having to jump right back into competition after at least three weeks away from her team.
“I would want to be able to practice for a couple of weeks,” Cook said of returning from at least three weeks off. “We had a lot of great momentum in the last month and we have been building on it week after week. We are peaking at the correct time. We started peaking two weeks ago and this is the kind of volleyball we wanted to be playing going into the state tournament. Now it is being halted. It’s really sad. I am pretty heartbroken for my players.”
Marian’s rise to a regional championship comes with a team without a single senior on the roster.
Cook is in her third year as head coach and relied heavily on sophomores and freshman in 2019 while still being one of the stronger teams in the state.
The Mustangs suffered a handful of losses throughout the season, including two to Mercy during the regular season. However, in October, the team found it’s stride and began playing better than anyone in the state. The current postseason run was sparked by a five-set win over Mercy in the Catholic League tournament championship match at the end of October.
Junior outside hitter Ava Brizard has been the go-to player for the Mustangs this fall. She recently committed to N.C. State for the fall of 2022.
At the net, she is joined by juniors Sophia Treder and Sarah Sylvester, as well as sophomores Ella Schomer and Reagan Sass.
Sophomore Ava Sarafa runs the offense at setter, while sophomore Lauren Heming is the team’s standout libero in the back row.
“This is one of my favorite teams I have ever coached,” Cook said.
“They have so much heart and so much resilience. We may not have a senior on the team, but the girls have a lot of experience and a lot of chemistry.
“It’s been a real pleasure to coach them.”