Sure, what’s a little more adversity for the Farmington Hills Mercy volleyball team?
The third-ranked Marlins (41-5-3) are headed back to the finals for the second time in three years, but, phew, pardon them if they need a few minutes to catch their breath.
Their 3-2 comeback over Bryon Center in the Division 1 semifinal on Nov. 20 at Kellogg Arena took everything they had — so much so, longtime coach Loretta Vogel commandeered the start of the postgame press conference to let out a sigh of relief for not only her team but the Mercy community at large.
“Wow,” she exhaled.
Wow is right.
Byron Center (37-6-2) started about as hot as you’d want in the final four, winning the first two sets 27-25 and 26-24 and grabbing almost all of the energy swirling around downtown Battle Creek.
To come back from that? It took an effort like the New England Patriots had against the Atlanta Falcons in the 2017 Super Bowl. You know, when they erased a 28-3 deficit and stormed back for the 34-28 overtime win.
Only Tom Brady wasn’t here to quarterback this comeback.
She’s playing at Nebraska.
That’d be recent graduate Campbell Flynn, last year’s Gatorade National Player of the Year and Michigan’s Miss Volleyball winner, who led Mercy past Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern for the 2023 state title.
But this wasn’t the first match the Marlins have played while missing elite talent.
Middle blocker McKenzie Andrews and setter Kaelyn Easton were absent during the district tournament, helping the U.S. Girls U-17 National Team win gold at the NORCECA Continental Championship in Costa Rica. Yet the Marlins prevailed, sweeping both Farmington and Livonia Stevenson 3-0 to advance to regionals.
No Flynn? No problem.
Their returning superstars have already proven they can win when teammates are missing.
“We had a lot of confidence,” said Ohio State commit Kate Kalczynski, No. 3 in PrepDig.com’s 2027 recruiting rankings. “We all just looked at each other (after bad plays) and were like, ‘Hey, we got this. We’re winning this game. We’ve done this before.’”
They certainly have.
Like against Bloomfield Hills Marian, winners of five state championships since 2009.
Mercy started the Catholic League championship down two sets before fighting back to capture the conference crown and ensure they’d enter the postseason battle-tested, ready for just about anything.
That just about anything came when Byron Center wouldn’t back down early.
“Playing Marian as much as we do really prepares us for this, and I think we prepare them (Marian) when they’re here (at the state finals),” Vogel said. “As much as we’re HUGE, HUGE rivals, that kind of pressure and rivalry prepares them for that emotional stability we look for in them.”
The Marlins didn’t sulk after Game 2.
They got back to work, fighting for 25-16 and 25-17 wins to set up a winner-takes-all fifth set.
“I think it was important for us to remember there were five sets in the match and not just three,” said Easton, who finished with a staggering 61 assists, a mark that would have tied Livonia Churchill’s Kelsey McKenzie for the record had it come in the state championship instead of the semifinal.
By the time “Hells Bells” by AC/DC signaled the start of Game 5, it was clear the bells weren’t tolling for the Marlins because there was no way they weren’t advancing for the fourth time in program history.
Out of a timeout, Kalczynski slammed down one of her game-high 30 kills to knot the score at 12.
One play later, she did it again.
The two teams went back and forth, with Byron Center’s Lainey VanTol tipping a ball into open territory to tie it again, this time 14-14. Only the Bulldogs couldn’t take advantage, sailing their next two balls over the net but out of bounds and giving Mercy the honor of moving its name on the MHSAA’s poster-sized bracket into the finals.
“We’ve been working all season for this,” said Stanford commit Ella Andrews, who finished with 17 kills. “We work on different drills where we’re down a certain number of points, and we have to fight back. This was an entire team effort. We fought the entirety (of the way), and I didn’t lose confidence at all. I thought we played really well.”
Like Bill Belichick making halftime adjustments during Super Bowl LI — and Brady calling audibles at the line of scrimmage in the second half — Mercy didn’t let getting smacked in the face stop them.
The Marlins bounced back, and they’re playing for a wooden mitten on Nov. 22 because of it.
“I don’t think we ever give up,” Vogel said. “I think there’s always something that we can change. And I think that’s important because we don’t want to go back and do the same thing again and again, and the other team is successful. We just have to make something else work.”
Brandon Folsom covers high school sports in metro Detroit for Hometown Life. Follow him on his new X.com account at @folsomwrites.
This article originally appeared on Hometownlife.com: Farmington Hills Mercy volleyball has Tom Brady comeback in semifinals
Reporting by Brandon Folsom, Hometownlife.com / Hometownlife.com
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
