Battle Creek — The first ever MHSAA boys volleyball finals are set after a quartet of semifinals across Divisions 1 and 2 on Friday at Kellogg Arena.
Top-seeded Grand Haven advanced to face undefeated Lake Orion in the Division 1 final at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, while Lowell, the top seed in Division 2, will face Grand Rapids South Christian at noon.
While there have been dozens of club-level boys volleyball programs associated with various Michigan schools districts, 2026 marked the first season boys volleyball competed as an MHSAA sanctioned varsity sport. This weekend marks the conclusion of the first-ever MHSAA postseason tournaments, in which two inaugural champions will be crowned on Saturday.
“It feels amazing, going from playing club with these two,” Grand Haven’s and Mr. Volleyball winner Caleb Cryst said, referencing teammates sitting next to him. “Playing beach with them, just playing years of volleyball, team bonding off the court, that type of stuff.
“And pushing forward, I feel like getting this accreditation on player of the year stuff, Mr. Volleyball, I feel like it helps build our energy. And I think past years, it also helps losing in the state finals. We want revenge. We want that championship. This is our year.”
Grand Haven, the top-ranked team in Division 1, features not only Cryst but another Mr. Volleyball finalist in Maddox Krugler. And the group generally showed off its elite athleticism and volleyball acumen as it dismantled Macomb Dakota in the first of the Division 1 semifinals.
While hitters like Krugler and Alfredo Ellis provided the fireworks with their high-flying kills — both have a 40-plus-inch vertical and stand 6 feet, 3 inches tall — it was a comprehensive effort that led Grand Haven to a 3-0 (25-15, 25-5, 25-16) win.
“When we’re in system, we’ve got four attackers ready to go,” Grand Haven head coach Jim VanTol said. “With a quick tempo set to all four. And it’s pretty hard to keep track of all four hitters at one time. That’s when we’re playing the best.”
Northville and undefeated Lake Orion, both ranked in the Top 10 in Division 1, delivered the most competitive match of the day in the last semifinal.
A neck-and-neck first set went Northville’s way, getting to set point and winning by the slimmest possible margin, 25-23. Lake Orion swung the second set, similarly closely fought, into a 25-20 win to knot the match, 1-1.
Lake Orion then parlayed that momentum into a clear edge in the third set, taking a 2-1 lead and needing a win in the fourth set to ice out the match. That set, of course, ended up being decided by a miniscule margin, with Northville winning 25-23 to send the match to a decisive fifth set, played to 15.
Lake Orion seized control in the fifth set, scoring five straight points to take a 5-1 lead behind hitters Jan Ludvik and Kuba Wolski and never looking back to clinch a 3-2 (23-25, 25-20, 25-15, 23-25, 15-8) win.
“We’ve been to a fifth set once but it was earlier in the season and on a stage like this, you don’t know how they’re going to respond but I’m really pleased with how they did,” Lake Orion head coach Tony Scavarda said. “And especially in that fifth set, just coming out firing, scoring early and putting the pressure on Northville.”
Both Division 2 finalists cruised to straight-set wins in the semifinals.
Grand Rapids South Christian won the first semifinal of the day, starting with a disjointed run of play and needing to climb out of a 6-1 hole in the first set. Head coach Mya Udell, who took a timeout as her team struggled out of the gate, said it just needed to snap out of that early funk and find its game.
Grand Rapids South Christian’s roster evidently got the message, as it then rolled to a 25-21 win in the first set and didn’t trail in the second or third sets, winning by the same score to take a 3-0 (25-21, 25-21, 25-21) win over Walled Lake Central.
“I think when I took the job in February, I never thought this would happen, and the boys have just worked really hard, and we’ve come together as a team,” Udell said. “We’ve communicated, we’ve worked together, we just had played our game, and that was really fun to watch.”
Lowell, the top seed in the D2 field, had even less trouble dispatching Auburn Hills Oakland Christian, 3-0 (25-12, 25-18, 25-14), barely trailing during any of the sets.
The last loss in a match for Lowell came on May 2, and Lowell has generally been cruising past opponents in the state tournament, except for a close battle with Grand Rapids Christian in the quarterfinals. On Friday, Lowell’s outside hitters got going and didn’t relent as it won by playing above the net.
But head coach Drew Davidson believes his team is capable of letting the hot hand win them a match. And on Friday, that was the outside hitters.
“Every day is different and you never know who’s gonna come out with the hot hands,” Davidson said.
And though his team ended up on the wrong side of the Grand Haven buzzsaw, Macomb Dakota head coach Alec Arena left Battle Creek on Friday bullish on where boys volleyball is headed in Michigan.
“Just making it official was so important for the sport, for the guys, just to — we’re not a club team anymore,” Arena said. “We’re an actual sport. So there’s been a lot more schools that have come out around us. We had to travel a lot less, which has been nice. And the level of competition is only going to get higher.”
Andrew Graham is a freelance writer.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Lake Orion, top-seeded teams advance to boys’ volleyball finals
Reporting by Andrew Graham, Special to The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Andrew Graham, Special to The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
