MONROE — You can forgive Karen O’Brien for saying Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central’s latest state volleyball championship was anti-climactic — because it really does sound like that’s the case.
For one thing, the Kestrels (39-2) swept every post-season match they played, including last Saturday’s final against Schoolcraft, 25-19, 25-16, 25-8. Even though the final was a match-up of the top two teams in Division 3, the only time Schoolcraft led the match was a 2-1 blip in the third set.
Plus, there was a different atmosphere in Battle Creek. Kellogg Arena was nearly empty, with a spectator limit of 100 in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For the 2019 title, they were No. 1 and we were No. 2, and into the fifth set it was tied 12-all, so basically the whole season came down to three points. The energy in that facility with a packed house (last season) made it different from this year,” O’Brien said. “We came in feeling confident, and after the first two sets we were playing really well, and the way we came out in the third (set), it wasn’t as stressful.”
The Kestrels made a statement right from the get-go. With Ava Kuehnlein serving first, Abbie Costlow had four straight kills, and coupled with two serve-receive errors by Schoolcraft, the score was 6-0 in the blink of an eye.
SMCC also had a pair of long serving runs in the “anti-climactic” third set: Mikayla Haut earned eight points in a row to break the game open, taking the score from 6-5 to 14-5, and Kate Collingsworth served out with the final seven points of the match.
While most state titles bring a feeling of unabated joy, O’Brien said this year’s celebration was tempered with a sense of relief because all the delays and pauses throughout the season, which, in normal circumstances, would have concluded in late November.
“It was a rollercoaster of emotions since we stopped Nov. 15,” she said. “Through that whole break, it was a case of, ‘Are we going to play or not going to play?’ But credit the MHSAA — they wanted to see it through, and they did.”
While the playoffs were on a seven-week hiatus, assistant coach Cassie Haut (Mikayla's older sister) put together a lifting and conditioning program, and the Kestrel players would do that on their own or at fitness centers throughout the community. Any time they could work with a ball was a bonus.
But none of that seemed to deter SMCC from its primary goal of becoming back-to-back state champions.
“As soon as they won last year, they said, ‘We want to go for two in a row,’” O’Brien said. “There have been other sports in Monroe County, like our softball team, wrestling in Bedford and Dundee, that have done it, but no volleyball team in the county has been able to win two in a row, so they said they wanted to go back-to-back.”
Every season since 2014, the Division 3/Class C state title has been captured by St. Mary Catholic Central or by Bronson, whom the Kestrels beat in straight sets during the quarterfinal played earlier in the week. Besides its last two championships, SMCC has also earned the top prize in 2014, 2012, 2010, 2007 and 2003.
Can they win it all again next season? Seven seniors are graduating, including four of the Kestrels’ five all-state players: first-teamers Haut, Costlow and Anna Dean, and third-teamer Kylie Barron. Collingsworth, a junior, returns at setter next year, and classmates Kuhnlein and Audrey Cousino are sure to have bigger roles going forward.
“For the most part, every year is a new year for us,” O’Brien said. “Schoolcraft was a different team, just like we were a different team. We graduated four girls off that team, but the experience we gained in 2019 just playing in Battle Creek made us successful. We had seven seniors and they all played last year in Battle Creek. Every set I play 10 (players) because of the system we run.”
Regardless of whatever shape the Kestrel roster takes in the next season starting just seven months from now, O’Brien hopes the team can get back to its regular volleyball routine.
“This was definitely a different year,” she said.
