Michigan volleyball coach Mark Rosen started the season down four seniors from last year. But speaking with the Daily last month, he insisted that the team isn't rebuilding this season — he prefers "reload."

Six matches into the season, the Wolverines have lost only one match. But as Michigan heads into Big Ten play, Rosen’s incoming class will have huge shoes to fill.

The four seniors who graduated in May — outside hitter Veronica Rood, right side/libero Megan Bower, right side Cassie Petoskey and outside hitter Juliana Paz — accounted for more than half of the Wolverines' kills and 43 of the team's 66 recorded blocks last season. All except Petoskey were in the starting lineup since their freshman year.

“How can you equate how important or how valuable or how good they were (when) all three of them started their entire career?” Rosen said of Rood, Bower and Paz.

Though their presence may have been priceless, it may not necessarily be irreplaceable. The freshman class has exceeded expectations so far and is on pace to fill in the missing pieces.

Just like the three aforementioned seniors before her, freshman middle blocker Jennifer Cross has already claimed a starting position. In six matches, Cross recorded 43 kills in just 18 sets played. That puts her behind only junior outside hitter Alex Hunt for the team lead — Hunt has 90 kills in 21 sets.

Behind the net, the Canada native Cross has tallied four blocks and 24 assisted blocks — topping all Wolverines and placing her fourth in the Big Ten this season.

Cross, along with freshman outside hitter Lexi Erwin, will have to assist the Wolverines in filling the big, empty shoes left by the senior class, a class that has arguably been the most successful in Rosen’s 12-year coaching career at Michigan. The first step for Cross, Erwin and the rest of the freshmen is to adjust to playing Division-I volleyball.

“In the first tournament things were iffy because I just wanted to be invisible,” Erwin said about the start of her collegiate volleyball career. “Trying to be invisible makes you so much more visible to everyone on the court. If you are visible they’ll start hitting it less to you because you are actually expecting it.”

Erwin, like Cross, has merged into the system quickly. She has played 20 sets, the most of any freshman and has notched 35 kills — second among the freshman class. But Erwin must begin to expect the ball.

“Freshmen can sometimes be targets on the courts because it may be easier to break them down,” Erwin said. “The coaches are really stressing to us to be confident and to always expect the ball.

“By them telling us to expect it, it makes it better because then you are more surprised when they are not hitting balls to you.”

Erwin and Cross said the coaching staff has emphasized the importance of taking advantage of the opposition's tendency to target freshmen.

“We have to play not like we’re a freshman,” Erwin said. “We have to play like we’re older. We have to play with an older mentality, so that we can blend in with everybody.”

Joining Cross and Erwin in the freshman class are defensive specialist Ally Sabol, outside hitter Molly Toon and redshirt freshman defensive specialist Brittany Lee. Sabol collected 12 digs in the Wolverines' 3-2 loss at Toledo on Aug. 28.

Toon started all four years in her high school in Middleton, Wisc. She recorded her first kill in Michigan’s 3-0 victory over Florida Gulf Coast on Saturday.

And Lee helped lift Cathedral High School to two city and state championships before going to Purdue and redshirting in 2009. Her transfer to Michigan makes her a redshirt freshman this season, with four years of eligibility remaining in Ann Arbor.

Rosen’s decision to reload before pulling the trigger may serve well this year and down the road as these young Wolverines begin to develop.

“We are going to have a younger lineup with less experience on the floor,” Rosen said in August. “There are a lot of unanswered questions, and that’s something that none of us know what this team is going to look like nor are we trying to figure that out quite yet. But at the same time I’m very confident that we have the makings of a really good team.”

The Wolverines' first home contest of the season will be on Friday at 7:30 p.m. against Youngstown State.