Seniors Cap Notre Dame Prep Careers with Championship Celebration
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
November 20, 2021
BATTLE CREEK – Josie Bloom and her Pontiac Notre Dame Prep senior classmates entered high school with the volleyball program on top.
They will leave having put it in the same place.
Led by a deep and talented senior class, the Irish defeated North Branch 25-17, 25-17, 25-12 on Saturday at Kellogg Arena to claim the MHSAA Division 2 Finals title.
“It’s awesome,” Bloom said. “We’ve had this goal since the beginning of the season, and it’s awesome to have that final feeling, and to go out with a bang.”
The title is the fourth for the Irish, and first since 2017, when the Class of 2022 was in the eighth grade. Notre Dame Prep has advanced to the Final Four in each of the past four seasons, and was a finalist in 2018. But the promise of this class was truly met Saturday as it capped off a remarkable 64-1 season by hoisting the Finals trophy.
“It’s so hard to do,” said Notre Dame Prep coach Betty Wroubel, who has coached all four Finals champions. “I don’t think people realize how hard it is to get this far and win. Anything can happen along the way. You need a little bit of luck, you need a lot of skill and you need a team that's going to persevere through adversity no matter what – injuries, officials calls or other teams that get hot against you – it doesn’t really matter, you have to be able to overcome that. I think this team’s mental toughness was awesome.”
The Irish, who are ranked fifth nationally and handed Division 1 champion Bloomfield Hills Marian its lone defeat, featured nine seniors. While standouts such as Bloom and Aly Borellis and Bianca Giglio deservedly get a lot of the credit, it was a late moment when reserve senior Leah Greif was inserted into the match and able to be on the court for the final points that garnered some of the loudest applause. She made it count with a perfect pass that led to a point.
“It’s awesome, because they work their butts off all season, too, along with all the starters,” Bloom said. “I think they definitely deserve a chance, and it’s awesome to see them succeed in a game like this.”
Bloom led the Notre Dame Prep defense with 20 digs, while Borellis led the attack with 17 kills and 13 assists. Giglio added 10 kills, while Margo Sudzina had 19 assists, and Elyssa Wallace had 17 digs.
While the Irish were senior-led, North Branch (46-9) was led mostly by its sophomore class.
The Broncos will graduate a single senior – Gracie Hyde – and the experience gained on the weekend is something coach Jim Fish believes will be of great value for the program as it also looks to get back to the top of Division 2. North Branch has won three titles itself, the latest coming in 2016.
“You can put it on the calendar; we will be back next year – we will be here,” Fish said. “They got a taste of it, we had a great weekend, we had a great time in this match. When the third game started, I told them, ‘Ladies, I’m having the time of my life and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. So, let’s just enjoy this.’ Our 10 sophomores against their 10 seniors, that’s two years difference. We played OK; they’re just a very good team. I give them all the credit, they’ve earned it, and they’ve waited four years to get it.”
Adrienne Greschaw had 19 assists for North Branch, with Natasha Bickel (seven) and Kaela Chingwa (six) leading the team in kills. Hailey Green had 18 digs for the Broncos, and Alana Deshetsky added 15.
“I would love to play them at full strength – that's not an excuse,” Fish said. “My outside (Deshetsky) couldn’t jump, she has two bad knees. My defensive kid (Hyde) couldn’t move. The result might be the same, so I’m not taking anything away. We knew we were up against it, we knew they were skilled at every position and it was a tall task. We had a great night (in the Semifinal win against Lakewood), and that’s what we’re going to rest our head on. They want to be here next year. They’re already talking about it.”
PHOTOS (Top) Pontiac Notre Dame Prep celebrates its Division 2 championship Saturday night at Kellogg Arena. (Middle) The Fighting Irish’s Bianca Giglio (9) sends a kill attempt at a North Branch block including Natasha Bickel (15). (Photos by Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Eye of a Tiger, Will of a Champion
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
November 6, 2012
The game was supposed to be fun with a little competition mixed in. That’s the general idea behind students vs. staff volleyball games like the one Vicky Groat stopped to watch during Battle Creek’s Catholic Schools week a few years ago.
But the tallest girl on the court, eighth-grader Amanda McKinzie, showed a little something extra that day – a desire the seven-time MHSAA champion coach continues to admire.
"There were some other kids in her class that were playing that were volleyball players, but (I thought) ‘She’s got it,’” Groat remembered last week. “She understands the game. She knows it’s joking around. But there’s that serious side to her, that competitive side. That’s cool.
“I remember sitting back (later), standing there going, that’s the competitive drive that I saw in her in eighth grade. Hopefully that continues for years to come.”
The 6-foot outside hitter enters the final two weeks of her high school career tonight ranking among the MHSAA all-time leaders in kills and aces, and as one of 10 candidates for this season’s Miss Volleyball Award handed out by the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association. The Second Half High 5 recipient this week has helped the Tigers to the last three Class D championships and is a big part why they are considered the state’s best team in any class as they pursue one more title before she heads off next season to Virginia Tech.
That’s a mouthful. But this is a season – and career – that McKinzie began preparing for in first grade.
Like most girls who come through the Tigers’ program, that’s when McKinzie first became part of the St. Phil volleyball family. The eventual stars start early and follow the varsity growing up, attending MHSAA Finals and having their shirts autographed by the players they look up to and someday might replace.
By her admission, McKinzie looked up to everyone who played on those teams – although it was hard for the emerging hitter to not pay special attention to Allison Doyle, who graduated from St. Phil in 2006 and went on to an All-America career at Western Michigan.
The game that sticks out most was Doyle’s last, a five-set loss to eventual Miss Volleyball Alisha Glass and Leland in the 2006 Class D Final. St. Phil has won every Class D title since.
“I just remember that game, how crazy it was,” McKinzie said. “I never really thought, ‘Wow, some day that’s going to be me.’”
But Groat had an idea. She’d watched McKinzie during summer camps and as the junior high athletic director, and brought the then 5-9 hitter up to varsity as a freshman. McKinzie was a little erratic at that point – “I’d have games where I’d hit one out, get frustrated and keep swinging harder and it would not go where I wanted it to,” she said – but has turned into a kill machine.
She’s connecting on 49 percent of her kill attempts for the second straight season – a far cry from her 22 percent efficiency as a freshman – and is approaching her best season of 699 kills. She already has posted career highs of 429 digs, 41 blocks and 130 aces.
And it’s not like she’s built her numbers against meager competition. No small-school team in any sport takes on the biggest powers like the Tigers do each fall. They are 68-2-1, with those losses coming during the second weekend of the season to Class A No. 9 Livonia Churchill and then two weeks ago to Class A No. 1 Richland Gull Lake after St. Phil had beaten the Blue Devils the week before. The tie came against Class B No. 6 Wayland.
McKinzie also played basketball through her sophomore season, and started, before focusing solely on volleyball. The drive to win that Groat noticed long ago stretches into just about everything, even “the little things.” McKinzie joked that she’d like to win more at ping-pong – but then explained, ‘No, I’m pretty good at that too.”
That scenario mentioned by McKinzie above – the shots sailing beyond her control – still happens sometimes. But she’s learned control. She’s tough to stop because she’s so powerful. Groat said “she’s kinda mean” before laughing immediately. But the confidence McKinzie has built over the last four seasons is obvious every time she takes the floor.
“I just feel it. I kinda get nervous in a way, a nervous exciting feeling,” McKinzie said. “That’s my favorite way to play.”
PHOTO: Battle Creek’s St. Philip’s Amanda McKinzie blocks a hit during last season’s Class D Semifinals at Kellogg Arena.