Glen Lake, Lake Leelanau St. Mary, Leland, Suttons Bay
The prep volleyball season is heating up as Glen Lake, Leland, Lake Leelanau St. Mary, and Suttons Bay are all poised for successful seasons in 2025.
Eagles soar onto the court Lake Leelanau St. Mary volleyball is ready for another season on the hardwood as the Eagles will sport five seniors on the court.
“We want to be able to keep it going and keep our volleys inside. That’s our big job this year. We want to be a scrappy team,” St. Mary coach Alyssa Bunek said.
St. Mary travels to the Petoskey Invitational on Today, then the Bay City Western Invitational on Saturday, before welcoming Glen Lake for the first home game on August 28 at 7 p.m.
“We want to get a lot of ball touches … It’s good to get tournaments early to get a lot of volleyball in in one day,” Bunek said.
The Eagles seniors are Daisy Serrano, Kaelyn Kelenske, Mackenzie Schaub, Madelyn Hamiton and Bridget Kohler.
“It’s exciting, finally, and I hope that we succeed … I think if we communicate well on the floor, then we’ll be fine,” Schaub said. “These seniors mean a lot to me. We’ve all been here from basically the beginning, all together. We are excited to finally get to shine in our senior year.”
St. Mary sophomore Lydia Bramer is ready to patrol the court for St. Mary all season long. She was dominant on the court all last season.
The Eagles fell last year in the district final against TC Christian and went (27–16-3) on the season.
“We are focused on communicating and learning how to work with each other and working as one,” Brammer said.
Eagle senior setter Daisy Serrano is returning after a stellar junior season. She can’t believe it’s her senior season.
“(These seniors) mean a lot to me because I’ve played with them my whole life, and we just have a close bond when we are both off and on the court,” Serrano said.
GL volleyball enters 2025 with substantial numbers The Lakers are focused on purposeful practice as they sail into the 2025 season with growth on their mind.
“It’s really about intention and purposeful practice and making sure that what we do here gets us those wins we want,” Glen Lake coach Stephanie Peplinski said.
Grace Noonan and Scarlett Vanderlinde are the Lakers’ lone seniors after having none last year.
The Lakers will have quite a few freshmen, sophomores, and juniors contributing on the varsity level this season.
Glen Lake will have increased size with Avery Flores, Delaney Dembowske, and Nadia Ihme among others making an impact at the net. Nora Ciolek will be on the back row waiting to play defense and set her teammates up for success. Laker sophomore Lydia Fosmore is also back for the Lakers, who will be all over the court for Glen Lake.
“I want them to not be afraid of failure and to lay it all out there. I’m excited that most of them have played together, but just building on those relationships, building on that trust on the court,” Peplinski said.
Glen Lake fell to Traverse City St. Francis in the district semifinal last season.
Noonan and Vanderlinde are excited to lead the team, especially as they navigate the waters of the Northwest Conference.
“We are coming together as a team again, and getting to work with each other is really fun and watching each other grow,” Noonan said. “Now that we’re not viewed as that young team, we can surprise everybody with how much work we’ve been putting in. We will take games one at a time, but it’s going to come as a surprise to a lot of people, because they’re gonna take us as the underdogs, but we’ve been working really hard for success.”
Vanderlinde is excited to take the court again with this team.
“I would say playing with all these girls again, we’re really a family-based group and we’re all friends and we just get along well. We get on each other’s nerves, we get along well,” Vanderline said. “I would say having trust and faith in everybody and faith in our coaches to coach us to a great level of volleyball.”
Leland is ready to prove themselves this season The Comets are ready to make their mark on the high school volleyball circuit during the 2025 season.
Last season, Leland had two returners after coming off a state championship appearance in Div. 4. This year, they have plenty of returning players with 15 total.
“That gets us going a little bit faster, earlier in the season. We have a lot of returners, and I am really hopeful that we continue to have some strong young athletes coming up through the program,” Comet Coach Travis Baker said.
The middle school program has over 20 athletes coming into the season.
Leland has been focused on serving and passing early in the season to be successful.
“The first two days, we didn’t do anything besides serving the pass. That’s five, six hours of practice, and we didn’t do anything but serve and pass. They’re buying in, we can’t do anything unless we serve it pass, so that’ll be the determining factor,” Baker said.
Cielle Fort, Abby Martini, and Molly Rousseau are returning seniors to lead the Comets.
Fort will be striking from the outside for the Comets.
“(Being a senior) is exciting, but it’s a little bit sad because it’s the last one, but I feel like everything that we’ve built up throughout the years, I feel good,” Fort said. “We are a big friend group, because we are all in classes together. We all believe in each other. It’s great being on the court with them also.”
Martini, who patrols in the middle, wants to have fun with her last high school volleyball season.
“I’m nervous, but I’m also excited.
It feels weird because this has been normal for the last six or seven years of my life. Volleyball, being in the fall. So that changing soon is going be strange, but I’m excited. I’m just going to put my all into this last season, go out with a bang,” Rousseau said They have a handful of juniors and sophomores also returning to the court. Sophia Sluiter, Leah Kiessel, and Aubrey Rousseau are all underclassmen who will be counted on this season.
SB volleyball is looking to improve this season The Norsemen are hitting the court hard and are ready to attack the 2025 season with success.
Suttons Bay senior Megan U’ren can’t wait to see what the team does this year.
“We have such good chemistry, and even though we have a really young team, we’re still going to have strong offense and defense,” U’Ren said.
U’Ren will be flying in from the outside. Suttons Bay starts the season Saturday at NMCS tournament.
“The most important thing is getting used to playing with each other because it’s always rough at the start, and then we are going to push ourselves to, go for every ball and have high standards and high expectations for ourselves to do good,” U’Ren said.
U’Ren and Yasmin Alfonseca are the lone Norsemen seniors.
The Norsemen will have plenty of underclassmen returning with experience, including sophomores Olivia Schmidt, Bella Wilson, Ava Anderson, Leah Clarke, and Elle O’Dwyer. Megan Lint and Anna Porter are both juniors.
“We’ve created really good friendships with each other so far this season because we have all been friends before volleyball. It’s a lot easier to work with everyone on the team when you’re all friends with them,” Schmidt said. “Some people are playing newer positions that they’re not used to, so I think that we should all work on being understanding of each other and helping each other if we’re confused.”
Schmidt will be leading from the libero position.
This is coach Olivia Dohm’s third year coaching and fifth year overall in the program. Suttons Bay will have a junior varsity and varsity teams along with healthy numbers coming up from the middle school levels.
“The cohesion and the ability to hold each other accountable is something I’ve never seen on a team before. They all want to work to win and get better, which is great to see,” Dohm said. It’s a really special team this year, and I’m excited to see what they can do with their talent and their drive. And I know we’re gonna have a lot of speed.”
The Norse are focused on finishing the game and not stopping when they have a lead or a deficit.
“The growth I’ve already seen from this group is phenomenal. We are really lucky to have this group of girls,” Schmidt said.
Suttons Bay defeated Leland for the first time in four seasons last season.
The Norsemen remained competitive last season and finished in fourth place in the Northwest Conference. Suttons Bay was defeated by Lake Leelanau St. Mary in the district semifinals in four sets.
