Following a loss to Indiana in the final game of the season, one last tally was drawn in the loss column for the Michigan volleyball team on Saturday night. But a win wasn’t really what the Wolverines were playing for; not in the context of the season and not in the context of the program’s trajectory.
With its record sitting at an unimpressive 7-22 overall and 5-15 in the Big Ten, Michigan’s hopes for postseason play were dashed long ago. When the potential for a successful season fades before the season closes, a team must find something else to play for.
For the Wolverines, this final game against the Hoosiers was played for their seniors and for the culture — for their past and for their future.
After dropping its first two sets to Indiana, the game wasn’t what Michigan talked about in the locker room. Instead, the Wolverines focused on their players.
“It was just remembering how great our seniors were,” junior middle blocker Jacque Boney said. “And how much of an impact they made on this program. There is a legacy with them and their impact and saying, ‘They’re always part of the family and forever go blue.’ ”
With this match marking the final game of the season, it also marked the final time the Wolverines’ seniors would don the Michigan jersey. And since a win certainly would not reconcile the disappointing season, it was more meaningful to play for the current seniors and the current culture.
And after losing top contributors entering the season like Jess Mruzik to the transfer portal and Jess Robinson to graduation, alongside a sudden coaching change, expectations for this season weren’t soaring. A first-year coach combined with a young, relatively inexperienced squad doesn’t generally mix to form a competitive season.
Instead, Virtue’s first year was about establishing culture. And this season, by emphasizing the appreciation of the team dynamic above winning, that culture was about enjoying the game of volleyball, not vying for a conference championship.
But there are risks in establishing a culture that isn’t focused on winning right away. This is college athletics — it’s not high school anymore. These students are recruited with the sole intention that they help bring wins into the program. And to establish a culture that doesn’t place winning as the highest priority risks the normalization of losing seasons.
The early season struggles for Michigan made people abundantly aware that this team was not built to be competitive. After losing two consecutive matches against Bowling Green and subsequently starting the year 2-12, the dream of the Wolverines being a Big Ten Championship caliber team under first-year Virtue had been sufficiently crushed.
And to continue to push for that goal would be to chase the unattainable, only setting Michigan up for the inevitable disappointment of failing to reach its goal. Instead, the Wolverines focused on enjoying the game as a team.
“Something we say is, ‘Let’s go into a locker room and talk about something we wish you would have done on the court. Let’s just go talk about how much fun we had today.’ ” Boney said. “Again, celebrating our seniors and just embracing that moment and just trying to extend it as long as we could.”
Despite the 3-1 loss, it was clear that Michigan still had fun. Even as the Hoosiers notched their final point to secure the win, the Wolverines laughed and smiled with each other before shaking their opponents’ hands.
Michigan didn’t play to win. The days of winning and losing having any bearing on the perceived success of its season were left behind long ago. Instead, the Wolverines put their team culture above winning and looked to the future.
“We have to be able to carry the culture that we’ve had into next year and then continue to grow and get better in our craft,” Virtue said. “We have to be able to build a foundation of culture to be able to build our competitive excellence on top of that, and I wouldn’t want that foundation to be rocky, and this group has laid a great one.”
Virtue’s reasoning is clear: if you can’t win this year, begin to lay the foundation for the future. Start to build a cohesive, team-oriented culture now so that the next few years can be focused solely on winning.
But in competitive sports, it’s always about winning. Whether or not a culture built in a severely disappointing season can transform into a culture of winning is yet to be seen. Because focusing on a culture that isn’t too concerned with winning is risky, but it could still prove to create the program-wide cohesion that is necessary for a winning culture right off the bat.
While the season was disastrous in terms of pure win-loss record, Erin Virtue is playing the long-game. If the culture she has fostered in this disappointing season breeds success in the future, perhaps this rebuilding year will be viewed as a necessary step toward future winning seasons. But until then, trust in Erin Virtue’s process and the team still must be earned.
And caution in this process should be exercised to make sure a short-term fix doesn’t become a long-term habit.