26 The Statement // ednesday, September 15, 2010 Wednesday, September 152010 The Statement 7 the tstatement Magazine Editor: Trevor Calero Editor in Chief. Jacob Smilovitz Managing Editor: Matt Aaronson Deputy Editor: Jenna Skoller Designers: Sara Boboltz Corey DeFever Photo Editor: Jed Moch Copy Editors: Erin Flannery Danqing Tang Cover Illustration: Marissa McClain The Statement is The Michigan Daily's news magazine, distributed every Wednesday during the academic year. To contact The State- met e-mail calero@michigandaily. com TH EJUNKD RAWER random student interview This is Will Grundler from The Michigan Daily. We're reintroducing a feature called Random Student Interview. Would you like to participate? Yes. State your name for the record. Kristen [name redacted]. What do you like best about the Daily? I like the Sudoku. The Sudoku? Not the award-win- ningjournalism? That's nice too. I mean, um ... yeah the Sudoku. Some have criticized the Daily of being too funny and light- humored. Do you disagree? I disagree. I don't think they're too funny. You're saying you need to be more serious? Moving on. So you know when you're sitting in class and you drop a pencil or pen and you don't want to take your eyes off the professor or the PowerPoint to go look for it? So you grope around without looking and you never find it. And once you bend down and do look for it it's a mil- lion miles away? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Well, hopefully someone around me is nice enough to take their eyes off whatever is going on to find the pen- cil for me. Is it acceptable inany situation for a male student to cross his legs and talk about literature at the same time? Or are the two mutually exclusive? Why wouldn't it be acceptable to do that at the same time? Do you know what mutually exclu- sive means? Is this a trick question? Just answer the question. Sure. Sure it's fine. It might look a little pretentious, but it's fine. Do you believe in evolution? Yes. Really? Yes. Really? So you think we just came to be at random? Do you think us meeting is just chance, that life is chance? Yeah. I do actually. On a related note, what makes your life worth living? Cause it's the subject of the theme semester. And try to answer seriously. Wow, that's pretty deep right there ... Let me just stop you right there. So you know when you're walking on campus and another person is walking inyour direction and even though you're a good distance away from each other it's always at the last minute that you decide to get out of each others' way and you move in the same direction as each other? Yeah. Do you think that's what makes life worth living? No. That's not what makes life worth living. Human contact? Well yeah, human contact but not in that form. Oh, so sexual intercourse? No. I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about love. Families. Spiritual connections with people. OK. So what major do you think stands the least chance of getting a girlfriend? I guess it depends. If it were me I would least date an undecided major. Because they don't know what they want in life and I need someone with some sort of direction. Is it ever acceptable for a male student to wear socks above his ankles and if the answer is no, what sort of ridicule should he be subjected to? Is he wearingshorts? Yes. That's a given. It's not acceptable. Well ... is he hik- ing? No. Just walking to class. It depends on how badly I feel for the kid. If he wears his socks like that over his ankles and it looks like his mom told him to do that then I feel pretty badly for him. But if he's doing that on his own.. - Kristen is an LSA junior. collegiate ranks quickly began. By the end of Zimmerman's sopho- more year of high school, Rosen said Lexi's improvement caught his eye. But the Rosens were behind when it came to Lexi's recruitment. By the time they had begun to recruit Zim- merman, the coaching duo thought it would be too late to get her. But the Rosens were persistent with the highly-touted Zimmerman and ultimately convinced her to visit Ann Arbor before her junior season in August 2005. Once she arrived, Rosen said, "it was one of those things where you could feel it being the right fit." Zimmerman said this past May that she wholeheartedly felt she "needed" to come to Michigan - to a place where maybe winning wasn't the main objective. She said she wanted to share the same values as the coaches who would be instruct- ing her for the next four years. So, after not being on Michigan's radar for too long, and without the usual back-and-forth correspondence of an already-established relation- ship, Zimmerman had the Wolver- ines' attention. But there was one minor hiccup. Another setter had the attention of both Rosens long before they had grown keen on acquiring Zimmer- man, and they had already offered the other player a scholarship, who had not yet made a decision. But, Rosen said, he liked Lexi better. Rosen, however, had to be fair to all parties. So, when Lexi asked him what would happen if both she and the other setter told him they wanted to go to Michigan, he told her they would take the other player because "it's the fair thing to do." But that didn't scare off Lexi. Fol- lowing her unofficial visit from Ann Arbor, Zimmerman notified Mark that she wanted to be a Wolverine. 'I didn't realize what I would be missing out on until I went on my visit," Zinsmserman said. "And then I said there was no way I was going anywhere else." The other setter was notified about Michigan's interest in Zim- merman, but she still wasn't ready to commit, even after a couple month's deliberation. The Rosens then offered the position to Zimmerman - boom - game time. There were about five setters that everyone was recruiting in the Midwest that year and once Lexi committed to Michigan, the rest "decided within the next three days," Rosen said. 'It was like bam, bam, bam - she got that thing going," Rosen said. "You just didn't want to be the team - it's like musical chairs - you didn't want to be the team without a chair." ALWAYS HAPPY, NEVER SATISFIED After Zimmerman received treat- ment on her nagging right thumb - which she injured in mid-October last year at Michigan State - she made her way over to the far end zone of Cliff Keen Arena and fielded a series of questions regarding her three-plus years as a Wolverine. The writing was on the wall, liter- ally. Sweet 16. Sweet 16. Elite Eight. Those are the end results of Zim- merman's first three years under Rosen, a period of unprecedented success for any Michigan volleyball team in its almost 40 years of exis- tence. And with all three banners hang- ing on the concrete wall adjacent to the electronic scoreboard, Zimmer- man could see the product of the Wolverines' diligence during off-sea- son workouts, the adversity they had faced over the course of the season's four-plus months and their commit- ment to raising the bar of excellence, when the bar hadn't even been lifted yet. None of those wins last season was more impressive and more notewor- thy than Michigan's three-set sweep of No. 4 seed Stanford in the Sweet 16, not to mention the match was played on the Cardinals' home floor in Palo Alto, Calif. When Zimmerman answered a question about the significance of the victory - which pushed the Wolver- ines into the field of eight - she belt- ed out an emphatic "Hell yeah." With the two-word response, it's obvious what kind of impact the win had on the progress of the Michigan volley- ball program, from where it has come since the start of the Mark Rosen era in 1999, and even spanning a shorter time frame, the Lexi Zimmerman era. The banners, and what they stand for, have had a big impact on Zim- merman. But they also show her how much further the team could go. "We're all happy with the success we've had and what we've accom- plished, but it's made us realize that if we can raise the bar to become a team that consistently makes it to the Sweet 16, then we can raise the bar again and be ateam that goes a little bit farther," she said. "The better you get, the harder it is to get a little bit better." Without former Wolverines like Beth Karpiak (2009) and Megan Bower (2010), Michigan wouldn't have made its way into national contention, nor would it have gar- nered the same amount of success in the past three seasons. But look- ing beyond Karpiak and Bower, only one name comes to mind when con- sidering the greatest influence on Michigan volleyball: two-time AVCA All-American Lexi Zimmerman. "There's no question that she's had the most impact on elevating our pro- gram of anybody in the history of the program," Rosen said. Before arriving in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2007, Zimmerman was touted as the nation's No. 1 ranked high school recruit. And now, in her fourth and final year at Michigan with an assist total of 4,916, Zimmer- man will soon crush Linnea Men- doza's all-time assist record of 5,072. The list of the number of accom- plishments she will eventually gar- ner as a Wolverine goes on and on, her most recent being selected as the University's Female Athlete of the Michigan volleyball coach Mark Rosen talks strategy with his team before they take the court against Youngstown State. (MARISSA MCCLAIN/ Daily) Year. While Zimmerman will prob- ably need another shelf or two at her home in Barrington, Illinois to house all her hardware, the awards and honors aren't what motivate the out- spoken and charismatic Zimmerman. "We see past that banner there," said volleyball player Alex Hunt, pointing to Zimmerman's AVCA All- America second team banner inside Cliff Keen, which she earned her sophomore season. "She doesn't hang her hat on that being up there. It's as if that means nothing to her. I mean, I'm sure it does, but it's not what she lives on everyday." So, what does motivate the once Gatorade Player of the Year? According to Zimmerman, she wanted to seize the opportunity to come to Michigan in order to take a program to where it had never been before, and to finally bring Michigan onto the national stage. To help bring the program its best season ever, advancing the team to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tourna- ment, was just icing on the cake. BY THE NUMBERS 4,9916 CAREER ASSISTS 157 ASSISTS SHY OF BEING MICHIGAN'S ALL-TIME ASSISTS LEADER 2 AVCA ALL-AMERICA TEAM SELECTIONS "(Michigan) was knocking on the door of success, and I was really excited tobe a part of that," Zimmer- man said. "I had two years to watch it get closer and closer and then when I finally got here, I was like, 'Put me in.' I want to makea difference.'" WANT TO JOIN THE MICHIGAN DA ILY? Come to our mass meetings at 420 Maynard Street at 7 p.m. on: THURSDAY SEPT.16 MONDAY SEPT. 20 Brand new UM soccer complex Frdiday, September 17th 2Games for the price of 1 5:OOPM Women's Soccer vs. UMass 7:3OPM Men's Soccer vs. Notre Dame Come celebrate the new complex with both teams! For more information, please contact Stephanie Bowker or Julianna Crim at dailydisplay cfgmail.com