2B — October 29, 2018
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The Rosens’ last job
A 

little under 20 years 
ago, Mark and Leisa 
Rosen 
were looking 
for their last 
job.
The couple 
had coached 
volleyball 
together at 
Boise State 
in 1998, but 
they wanted 
to start a 
family. So 
they needed a stable job to 
facilitate a changing home-life 
— one that, if all went well, 
would be the only job Mark 
and Leisa would have for the 
rest of their careers.
Michigan fit the bill then, 
as Mark joined as the head 
coach in 1999, bringing Leisa 
along as an assistant before 
she became the associate head 
coach. Twenty years later, the 
Rosens are still here.
Mark is now the winningest 
volleyball coach in Wolverines 
history, and he has done it all 
with Leisa, the associate head 
coach, by his side.
The pair has overseen nine 
All-Americans and 16 of the 17 
NCAA Tournament berths in 
Michigan’s history.
“We talk about it now,” 
Mark said of the 20-year 
benchmark. 
“We’re both 
very, we don’t 
have a lot of 
pictures in our 
house. We’re 
not people 
that think a lot 
about the past. 
We think about 
the current, the 
present. But, 
you know, when 
we see (former players) it 
makes me think about that.”
On Saturday, the Rosens’ 
former players were at Crisler 
Center in droves. Six of them 
stood behind Rosen and a 
group of reporters following 

the Wolverines’ straight-set 
loss to No. 3 Minnesota.
The smiles and laughs the 
players were sharing were not 
indicative of the result of the 
match they had just watched.
Mark and 
Leisa’s first 
recruit, Erin 
Brown was at 
Crisler Center 
too, though she 
wasn’t on the 
floor after the 
game. Mark says 
Brown stays 
with the Rosens 
“all the time.”
“My sons 
think of her as a sister,” Rosen 
said.
That is the most prominent 
example of tenets Mark and 
Leisa have tried to instill in 
the program from day one.
“When Leisa and I got here, 

we wanted to build a program 
based on values,” Rosen said. 
“… It is a family, you know, 
but it’s not the same. It’s not 
the same as blood relatives. 
But we wanted an atmosphere 
where people 
cared about 
each other — 
where people 
were unselfish, 
where people, 
you know, 
they put their 
teammates and 
their program 
ahead of 
themselves and 
really cared 
about each other deeper than, 
‘Hey, I played next to you. We 
were teammates.’
“And so, when we go to a 
wedding, and we see so many 
of the players come back and 
be there for their teammates, 

that makes me really proud, 
because it’s like, that’s our 
culture.”
Freshman outside hitter 
Paige Jones already feels the 
family atmosphere in her first 
season. She says 
it permeates 
through the 
whole program, 
stemming from 
the closeness of 
the players just 
as much as the 
Rosens.
But it isn’t 
a coincidence 
that a team run 
by a husband 
and wife feels familial to the 
players within it.
“Mark and Leisa are 
awesome,” Jones said. “They 
have our back. They want 
the best for us in everything 
besides volleyball.

“Leisa is definitely more, I 
don’t want to say aggressive — 
she’s more fiery,” Jones said. 
“She’s the one that will get on 
us, because she knows that 
that will make us better. She 
said yesterday 
in the locker 
room that she’d 
rather beat 
up on us than 
another team 
come out and 
beat up on us. 
And then Mark 
is, I mean, they 
both have great 
volleyball IQ. So 
Mark is the one 
that’s just telling us what we 
can do better in more of a laid-
back type of way.”
Apparently that mix of 
coaching styles has worked. 
The Wolverines had a tough 
weekend on the court, as 

they also lost to Wisconsin 
on Friday night, but the two 
losses are just Michigan’s 
fourth and fifth losses of the 
season.
The Wolverines are on track 
to make their 17th NCAA 
Tournament under the Rosens.
It would have been hard for 
anyone to imagine just how 
well Mark and Leisa’s hiring 
would work out for both them 
and Michigan.
“It’s cool to now fast 
forward 20 years later and 
say, ‘You know what, we 
made a really good choice,’ ” 
Mark said. “You know, it’s a 
great place to be. We love it 
here. I love everything about 
Michigan, in terms of the 
academics, the atmosphere, 
the culture. It’s a great place. 
So I feel really good that we 
ended up here.”
It’s easy to say that with 
the success the Wolverines 
have had under Rosen, but you 
can tell Rosen is talking more 
about the non-volleyball parts 
of his job and Michigan as a 
whole. He speaks most fondly 
of the players he has had in his 
20 seasons, like the ones who 
came back to Ann Arbor this 
weekend.
The Rosens have established 
themselves as good coaches, 
and they have done it by 
establishing 
their culture.
Everything 
has gone well 
enough for them 
to still be in 
Ann Arbor.
In the 
middle of their 
20th season 
at the head 
of Michigan, 
it seems the 
Rosens found their last job 
after all.

Persak can be reached at 

mdpers@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @MikeDPersak

EVAN AARON/Daily
Michigan volleyball coaches Leisa and Mark Rosen have left an undeniable mark on their program in their 20 seasons at the helm together.

Blue line dominates in Michigan’s 
3-1 win over St. Lawrence Saturday

When Quinn Hughes went left 
against St. Lawrence, he was, 
more often than not, right.
In the No. 12 Michigan hockey 
team’s 3-1 win over the Saints, 
the sophomore defenseman quite 
literally found a zone — the left 
point. Whether it was his score 
or one of his two assists, the 
Wolverines relentlessly funneled 
their offense to the left point.
Michigan started the game 
with a lot of pressure on the 
Saints’ back line, dominating the 
puck for much of the first period. 
While St. Lawrence goaltender 
Austin Brey started the game 
strong, the Saints’ blue line 
didn’t do him any favors.
Although 
St. 
Lawrence 
crowded the center of the ice 
near the goal, that left the rest 
of the offensive zone free for 
Michigan. As a result, each of 
the Wolverines’ 13 shots in the 
first period went unblocked by 
the Saints’ defense, with most of 
those coming from the top of the 
zone.
“[St. Lawrence] gets a stick 
on you or an arm on you, they 
really make it difficult for you to 
do anything down low and even 
on the rush they have people 
back,” said MIchigan coach Mel 
Pearson. “ … So what that does is 
open up the blue 
line. You have to 
go low to high 
and 
then 
just 
get to the next, 
and get in traffic 
and make things 
happen.”
Brey matched 
his 
Herculean 
effort 
from 
Friday 
night 
before with 37 
saves, and started off by blocking 
a slapshot by sophomore forward 
Jack Becker from the top-middle 
of the zone, then doing the same 
minutes later on a shot from 
freshman forward Garrett Van 
Wyhe.
The 
Wolverines, 
though, 
dialed up the intensity, eventually 

finding twine 5:52 into the game 
when Norris deflected in a shot 
from Hughes with his left skate. 
In the third period, Michigan 
scored an almost-identical goal, 
as Olmstead notched his first 
career goal after getting behind 
Brey and taking in Hughes’ pass 
from the left point.
With the Wolverines bringing 
the 
heat 
at 
even 
strength, 
the 
offensive 
flow 
naturally 
transferred over 
to the power play 
as well. Seven 
minutes 
after 
the 
first 
goal, 
Hughes 
found 
himself in the 
same 
spot 
as 
before, corralled 
a cross-ice pass from senior 
defenseman 
Joseph 
Cecconi 
and knocked in another score to 
increase the Wolverines’ lead to 
2-0.
“Their forwards were coming 
out really hard so we didn’t have 
a lot of time,” Hughes said. “Like 
I said before, we have to make a 

quick play and fortunately we 
had good screens.”
Even while Michigan couldn’t 
take advantage of its next three 
power-play 
opportunities, 
its 
blue line held strong, though, 
holding the Saints to 19 shots 
for the game — and only five 
shots in the second period. St. 
Lawrence’s lone goal came off a 
faceoff rebound that careened to 
the net — one of just two shots for 
the Saints in the period.
And after allowing 11 shot 
attempts on the left side of 
the ice in the first period, the 
Wolverines allowed just two in 
the second period. On a Saints 
breakaway, freshman goaltender 
Strauss Mann deflected a shot 
with the outstretched tip of his 
right mitt, just barely preventing 
a top shelf goal. For the game, 
Mann saved 18 shots.
While Michigan won’t always 
be able to pick and choose its 
spots on either side of the puck as 
much as it did Saturday, keeping 
that intensity and pressure both 
ways will serve them well as they 
move on to bigger and better 
opponents.

Michigan defense stepping up

Few numbers speak louder for 
a defense than a shutout and one-
goal-conceding game.
Over 
the 
weekend, 
the 
Michigan hockey team swept 
St. Lawrence, winning 3-0 and 
3-1 Friday and Saturday night, 
respectively. The wins came in 
large part due to its resurgent 
defense. 
“I think the last couple games, 
we gave up, I don’t know the 
exact number, but I think it was 
around 20 goals,” said sophomore 
defenseman Quinn Hughes. “So 
obviously, it’s not good enough if 
we want to win. I think one of the 
main focus points coming into 
this weekend was cleaning up 
our defensive game, and I think 
we did a really good job with that 
this weekend.”
A good job might be putting it 
lightly. Having turned the ship 
around, the Wolverines’ united 
defense 
played 
earnestly, 
a 
welcoming display for fans after 
letting five goals in each of the 
their first three games.
Shot 
blocking, 
defensive 
hustle and upped physicality 
all contributed. A team needs 
all three in order to hold the 
opposition under 20 shots — as 
Michigan did both nights this 
weekend. The biggest display 
of a defensive team effort is the 
discipline.
Previously, 
the 
Wolverines 
committed 15 penalties through 
three games. Over the weekend, 
they committed only one each 
game — coinciding with the best 
defensive performances of the 
year.
“How many did we take 
yesterday, just one? I think that 
speaks for itself,” said sophomore 
forward Josh Norris. “You know, 
(Michigan coach Mel Pearson) 
is always preaching about being 
the least penalized team in the 
country. And, starting yesterday, 
for the most part, I think we were 
pretty disciplined and especially 
against a team like that, that’s 
pretty physical and can get 
underneath your skin, so I think 
we did a good job with that.”
St. Lawrence won’t just get 
underneath the opposing team’s 

skin. The Saints will get above 
it too. As Pearson noted, they 
have sticks and arms around 
players that make it difficult to 
do anything down low — which 
is where they focused in return.
“They collapsed down low,” 
Pearson said. “They really clog 
it up. Even on the rush they have 
people back.
“They do a good job. They play 
defense first. They really grind.”
Down low is where a lot 
of the physical nature of the 
game comes into play. Battles 
for positions, hard drives and 
scruffles for the rebound define 
the area of play. So it’s easy to 
see how penalties will get called 
where sticks, bodies and words 
are easily exchanged.
“We’re really trying to up 
the ante on physicality in the 
d-zone,” said freshman forward 
Michael Pastujov. “And anyone 
who knows me knows I’m not a 
big hitter, but the opportunity 
was there so I just took it and 
I think it shows that even the 
guys who aren’t known to be big 
hitters could still play physical.”
But throughout the weekend, 
the Wolverines played within the 
boundaries of the game except 

for two moments. 
The only lapse in the first game 
came from an unnecessary play.
“I didn’t like the one penalty 
we took,” Pearson said. “In the 
offensive zone, just jumped up 
and hit a guy, and we didn’t need 
to.”
The 
second? 
Just 
as 
unnecessary — as senior forward 
Brendan Warren committed a 
minor interference resulting in 
a call. 
“Hockey 
is 
a 
game 
of 
mistakes,” Pearson said. “You’re 
gonna make mistakes. and you’re 
just trying to limit how many 
you make and not make them in 
critical times.”
And 
that’s 
part 
of 
the 
discipline that was showed both 
nights. Even though the two 
penalties were committed, they 
were done in times where they 
didn’t really attribute to the flow 
of the game.
“If we can do that, we continue 
to keep it three or under power 
plays a game, we’re going to be 
in good shape,” Pearson said. 
“We have to play disciplined, not 
only in penalties but within our 
system, and I’m starting to see 
more and more of that.”

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Sophomore defenseman Quinn Hughes notched a goal in Saturday’s game.

RIAN RATNAVALE
Daily Sports Writer

“Like I said 
before, we have 
to make a quick 
play.”

TIEN LE
Daily Sports Writer

EVAN AARON/Daily
Sophomore forward Josh Norris tallied a goal and assist on Saturday.

“We’re not 
people that 
think a lot 
about the past.”

“ ‘You know 
what, we made 
a really good 
choice.’ ”

“It is a family, 
you know, but 
it’s not the 
same.”

MIKE 
PERSAK