In the season following the unexpected firing of long-time head coach Mark Rosen in Dec. 2022, the Michigan volleyball team posted its worst season since 1989. Under the new coach, Erin Virtue, The Wolverines posted a 7-22 overall record alongside a 5-15 Big Ten performance to boot.
In fairness, the first year of any program under a new head coach is a wash. It’s sometimes necessary to look past the numbers and understand what’s happening behind the scenes: A new coach arrived in town bringing new standards alongside her own staff, making the players have to readjust to a new authority. Change in sports is tough, and major shake ups and winning seasons are generally mutually exclusive.
But now, the first-year growing pains are over, the rebuild is underway and Michigan is ready to get rolling again.
“I think we got the jitters out our first year,” associate head coach Benavia Jenkins said at Big Ten Volleyball Media Days on Monday. “I definitely was nervous being in the acting head coach’s role (due to Virtue’s absence). But it was a great experience, a learning lesson for myself.”
Virtue missed portions of last season due to her obligations as an assistant coach on the USA National Team. Even now, Virtue is across the Atlantic Ocean in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. In her absence, Jenkins stepped up and assumed head coaching duties at times in 2023, throwing even more change into an already chaotic period for the program.
This year, though, Virtue is expected to be in Ann Arbor all season long, and the new-look Wolverines don’t intend to repeat last year’s woes. Already in the spring scrimmage season, Jenkins noticed many of the team’s previous issues beginning to iron themselves out.
“I’m still in awe and so excited for (the team) just because of how well they were in the spring, how they dominated,” Jenkins said. “When we were down, how did they respond? And I don’t think in the fall we got that same response in some matches.”
But even that team that performed so well in the spring isn’t the final roster. Virtue and her staff added a whopping six new freshmen in a class that ranks 12th nationally according to PrepDigs alongside Alabama transferKendyl Reaugh.
With such high roster turnover, many of these new faces in the locker room can be expected to make instant impacts on the court for Michigan. When asked who she was most excited to see on the court in 2024, junior middle blocker Serena Nyambio gave three names: graduate outside hitter Allison Jacobs, Reaugh and freshman outside hitter Cymarah Gordon.
Jacobs missed the 2023 season due to injury, so the team is understandably excited to get a solid player and leader back on the court. Reaugh brings both size — standing 6-foot-3 inches — and ability to the court alongside four years of high-level experience with the Crimson Tide.
“She looks great, she passes great, she has some good size to her,” Nyambio said of Reaugh.
Gordon is no stranger to winning either. Her senior year, Gordon led her high school team Mater Dei to a national championship in the MaxPreps rankings, and clinched a CIF Open Division State Championship. Michigan certainly hopes she can bring her winning ways to Ann Arbor as well.
With a rocky year one of a new coaching regime behind them and a solid foundation of a rebuild already set, the Wolverines aim to put last season behind them. With so many new, young faces now on the squad, Virtue’s plan starts now.
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