Novi junior setter Erin O’Leary participates in drills during volleyball tryouts Wednesday. The Wildcats won the Class A state title last year, defeating Romeo in the final.
Erin O’Leary, an All-State setter on Novi’s Division 1 state championship team, committed to University of Michigan after her freshman year and was recently named to Team USA’s Youth National Team.
So it’s understandable if the junior appears to have bigger things in store than high school volleyball, right?
Don’t even go there — Wednesday night, there was no place O’Leary would have rather been than in Novi’s gym, with her friends at team tryouts.
“I love this team so much with all of my heart, especially going through what we did in the past two seasons,” she said. “I’m just excited to have a good time again. We’ve all become so close, and I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Actually, O’Leary will miss part of it for the world. Her season will be interrupted from Aug. 27-Sept. 8 while she travels to Puerto Rico to play for Team USA.
“I know how my coaches feel and how the rest of my team feels — they just want me to be getting better, whether that’s in this gym or it’s in the USA gym that I’m playing in, and that I’m having fun,” said O’Leary, who had nearly 1,400 assists last year as the Wildcats went 55-2 and won their sixth-straight Kensington Lakes Athletic Association crown.
And it’s not like the cupboard will be bare when O’Leary goes on hiatus.
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Novi returns plenty of firepower, including All-State outside hitter Ally Cummings (Valparaiso), as well as Kathryn Ellison, Emmy Robinson and Claire Pinkerton, who were also in the starting rotation.
“Especially being a senior, you feel a little bit more pressure to be able to carry it as far again, but we have pretty much the same group of girls this year and I know we can go as far as we can put our minds to,” Cummings said.
And that’s where Novi’s problem lies.
“We’ve got 12 returners, we had two players transfer (in), and we have 10 juniors coming up from JV, so I’ve got 24 girls here for 16 spots,” head coach Jennifer Cottrell said. “I’ve got to make 8-10 cuts, which is awful, especially in high school.
“In club, it’s like they’ll just go play for someone else, but here, it’s also an honor to wear the jersey, and we have to respect that process.”
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Those who don’t make it will be encouraged to try other options, such as attending clinics and camps, playing club ball, becoming a team manager, or even pursuing another fall sport.
“When you’re talking to them they’re so emotional and they don’t process it, so we try to get it on paper,” Cottrell said. “When they go home to their parents, it’s right there. If they didn’t catch what I was saying, it explains the weaknesses. It could just be a positional thing; you don’t need 12 defensive specialists.”
While Cottrell explained “at the varsity level you pretty much know what you’ve got coming into the gym with summer workouts and scrimmages and camp and stuff like that,” the Wildcats still have to get things in motion quickly, as they open the season at the Grand Haven tournament in 10 days.
“We start with the west side,” she said. “It’s nice to kind of go out of your element here and play teams you don’t necessarily see, it’s a nice opener. We go to the beach before and do a little bonding thing and we stay overnight, so it’s fun.”
And if all things jell, the Wildcats could be primed for a second-straight state title.
“For us, our focus is always on getting in the gym and getting better, and taking care of one thing at a time, and that’s probably why we were so successful last year,” Cottrell said. “We didn’t focus on the end, we just focused on the process and not the outcome.”