The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Friday, September 13, 2019 — 7

Twenty hours before the 
plane 
containing 
delegates 
representing 11 different Big Ten 
volleyball teams touched down 
on foreign soil, all the players 
met up for a brief practice in 
Chicago.
There, they spent 45 minutes 
familiarizing themselves with 
one another before flying to 
Japan 
on 
June 
14 for two weeks 
for the 2019 Big 
Ten 
Volleyball 
Foreign Tour.
As night fell, 
the 
players 
and staff made 
their way to the 
airport. 
They 
trudged through 
the 
terminals 
together 
before 
taking off, concluding their 
brief introduction.
***
When it comes to volleyball, 
Mark Rosen’s seen everything. 
After 27 years as a head coach, 
20 with the Wolverines, Rosen 
acquired an array of knowledge, 
not just with collegiate teams 
but national teams, too. 
Even to him, being the head 
coach for the Foreign Tour team 
was “a very unique experience.”
First slotted as an assistant 
coach on staff, Rosen was 
promoted to the top position 
after former Iowa coach Bond 
Shymansky, the orginial head 
coach of the Foreign Tour 
team, was fired due to NCAA 
violations. Assuming his new 
position, Rosen had a hunch this 
experience 
coaching 
former 
opponents 
would be a new 
challenge.
“You’re 
coaching players 
that 
you’ve 
actually coached 
against, 
so 
that’s 
a 
weird 
dynamic,” Rosen 
said.
Rosen 
has 
seen the scouting 
reports on these 
players over the seasons, but 
building a system around a 
ragtag team last minute was a 
tall task.
“Some of it was just finding 
what players do, what roles go 
well,” Rosen said on making 
adjustments 
from 
match 
to 
match. 
“I 
didn’t 
really 
go 
into it with really that much 
information about the players. 
So we were figuring out on the 

fly who handles what situations 
well, who do we want to put in 
certain positional situations.”
***
Natalie 
Smith 
spent 
the 
majority of her first two years 
at Michigan as a defensive 
specialist. There was no need 
for a different player to get reps 
at libero during career starter 
Jenna Lerg’s tenure. But upon 
Lerg’s 
graduation, 
the 
spot 
opened up, and Smith rose to 
the occasion.
During 
the 
spring 
season, 
the junior was 
the Wolverines’ 
primary libero, 
but even then, 
her reps were 
limited. There 
were just seven 
games 
over 
the course of 
the spring, so 
the trip to Japan to face high-
caliber teams — collegiate and 
professional — proved valuable 
for a player getting adjusted to 
a new role.
“It 
was 
a 
really 
good 
opportunity for her,” Rosen said. 
“Being a younger libero, trying 
to step in and trying to take over 
for Jenna, and that role, that’s a 
big shoe to fill. I thought it was 
a great extra opportunity for 
her, another two weeks to play 
volleyball, another opportunity 
to be in that role.”
The 
opportunity 
wasn’t 
without its challenges, though. 
There was only one libero spot 
on the Big Ten team, and Penn 
State’s Jenna Hampton eyed it 
accordingly. In the end, Smith 
earned the role and Hampton 
became the designated defensive 
specialist.
What 
stood 
out 
to 
Rosen 
was 
Smith’s 
skill as a first-
touch 
passer 
and 
— 
taking 
from 
previous 
role as defensive 
specialist — her 
defense.
“She ended up 
playing 
libero 
in pretty much 
every match,” Rosen said. “And 
(Hampton) played (defensive 
specialist) and part of that is 
because she passed consistently, 
she defended really consistently, 
and she played really well.”
***
When the team landed in 
Osaka, 
Japan, 
complications 
arose.
When the players and coaches 
arrived, they prepared for a 

full day of activity — eyeing a 
practice at Senri Kinran, a 
university in Osaka. They had 
their first matchup later that 
afternoon and a team dinner 
that evening.
But the team couldn’t practice 
due to problems with the Senri 
Kinran practice facility. 
“I think there was a shooting 
that was going on there,” Smith 
said. “So we ended up going to a 
different part of town.
Prioritizing safety, the team 
used its practice time, instead, 
to explore the city, stopping by 
temples and various parts of the 
town.
For 
Senri 
Kinran, 
losing 
practice for a day was just lost 
practice. For the Big Ten team, 
it was losing so much more — 
they only had a set number of 
practices to begin with. After 
hours on a plane, moments after 
meeting as teammates for the 
first time, that practice wasn’t 
simply business as usual. It was 
a chance to further gauge each 
player, form chemistry and just 
get into a rhythm.
For a team already struggling 
with familiarity, the lack of 
practice was a heavy blow.
And it showed the next day 
when the two teams faced off. 
The Foreign Tour team not only 
lost, but lost badly. 
“We step on a court against a 
college team who really wasn’t 
very good,” Rosen said. “And as 
I watched them play and warm 
up, they weren’t very physical, 
they weren’t really that good.”
Not really that good, but good 
enough to dominate the Foreign 
Tour team and blow it out in a 
4-0 sweep? To lose 25-16, 25-15 
to a team filled with players no 
taller than the shortest player 
on the Big Ten team’s end?
But to Rosen, the answer was 
simple.
“They were organized and 
we weren’t organized, because 
we didn’t really have a chance 
to organize the team. It was bad 
volleyball.”
Added 
Smith: 
“That 
was 
disappointing, but also I think 
that you can’t become an All-
Star amazing team, ever, in 12 
days.”
The next day, the schedule 
for the Big Ten team was wake 
up, go on a morning sightseeing 
session in Osaka, and then 
head immediately to the game 
with an hour to warm up. On a 
normal gameday at Michigan, 
the players would have three 
to five hours to get into game 
mode.
“Here,” Rosen said, “we did it 
in 20 minutes.”

Combine the time crunch 
with the lack of chemistry and 
practice, and the source of the 
frustrating result became clear. 
“It 
was 
frustrating 
for 
everybody, 
and 
the 
players 
weren’t trying to play bad,” 
Rosen said. “It was nobody’s 
fault. It’s just, you’re trying to 
organize this group without 
any time or any opportunity to 
organize it. So I thought that 
along with everybody else, it was 
really frustrating 
that first night, 
because we were 
looking on, ‘How 
is 
this 
team 
losing?’ ”
The 
team 
concluded its day 
in Osaka with the 
bruising loss and 
traveled to Kyoto 
to 
repeat 
the 
cycle, this time 
with a new city and a new team, 
but a similar result.
Despite 
another 
three-set 
loss, this one felt different to 
the team. None of the sets were 
a one-sided affair. Instead, the 
team strung together three 
tightly contested sets and saw 
the growing pains beginning to 
subside.
“I thought in the second 
night, we played another college 
team who was a little bit better,” 
Rosen said. “And we played 
better.
“... We were like, ‘Hey, if we 
had played the team we played 
last night, we probably would 
have won.’ We could see them 
progressing.”
***
A 
college 
team 
and 
a 
professional team are separated 
by a lot of things: salaries, 
endorsements, 
contracts. 
But the biggest factor in the 
matchup between the Foreign 
Tour team and Denso Airybees, 
a professional team based in 
Nishio, was practice regulation.
As 
college 
athletes, 
the 
players and coaches are limited 
to 20 practice hours weekly. 
As Rosen joked with his team, 
“Those guys are probably at 20 
hours of training by Tuesday.”
And 
with 
more 
time 
to 
practice 
and 
train, 
comes 
a 
higher 
level 
of 
play. 
Additionally, the style of play 
in Japan is completely different 
from the U.S. Whereas in the 
U.S., physicality is the name of 
the game, speed rules supreme 
in Japan. In the matchup, the 
differences in style and training 
showed.
“They practice a lot, and you 
can tell by the way they play,” 

Rosen said. “They’re not very 
physical. They don’t outphysical 
you, they outplay you.”
The end result was another 
three-game sweep, but unlike 
before, the growth of the Big 
Ten team could be seen as the 
sets progressed. 25-12, 25-18, 
25-19. The more the teams 
played, the more adjusted to the 
speed the Big Ten players got.
They were playing together 
and playing better volleyball. 
The next night, 
in front of a 
crowd of 1,500, 
the 
Big 
Ten 
team 
played 
Denso Airybees 
again. 
There, 
they made its 
breakthrough.
“They’re 
so 
fast, 
and 
their system is 
so 
intricate,” 
Rosen said. “And a lot of these 
players had never seen anything 
like that so we had to make some 
adjustments on the fly.”
Because the players in Japan 
were so much shorter, they ran 
their offense faster, forcing 
the contact to come around 
the chest area — a different 
experience for the players who 
are used to extending the length 
of their arms in hopes of tipping 
the ball with fingertips. The 
new point of contact and speed 
took time to adjust to, but with 
a proper game plan, they could 
envision the style vividly post 
match.
There was no practice time 
in between the matches, despite 
being on two different days. 
There was only a video session, 
where the team sat down and 
talked about what it had to do. 
“Just 
speed 
comes so fast, you 
can’t move very 
much,” 
Rosen 
said. “Once the 
ball is set to the 
hitter, from set to 
hit, we call that 
base to read, you 
have no time, so 
you got to kind of 
position yourself 
in a way where 
you basically just 
have to face the action. You 
can’t really move into a new 
position.”
The 
player 
that 
excelled 
in that was none other than 
Natalie Smith.
Smith provided support in 
more ways than just as a libero, 
proving instrumental to the 3-1 
win against Denso Airybees. 
She stepped up as a leader.

People who have worked with 
her say she’s an easy person to 
play with. She communicates 
well, works hard and connects 
easily. 
“She can slide into your 
team and be pretty comfortable 
pretty quickly,” Rosen said.
Once 
Smith 
acquainted 
herself with the team, she took 
the next step as a player, taking 
a leadership role. As a libero, 
she occupied a large part of the 
court. However, just as the team 
didn’t have any scouting reports 
on the opposition, the teams 
they faced didn’t have any on 
them. So it boiled down to what 
the teams saw on the court.
“They see a girl in the other 
colored 
jersey, 
and 
they’re 
going to assume she’s probably a 
pretty good passer,” Rosen said. 
“So she really didn’t get tested a 
lot, so she was helping the other 
players a lot by pushing their 
court and making sure she took 
more court, to ease them off, to 
help them.”
It 
was 
something 
Smith 
had seen time and time again. 
They avoided her in the service 
game, giving her space on the 
court. That paid its dividends 
in the rematch against Denso 
Airybees. From her ball control 
to her defense, Smith actively 
commanded the first touch and 
enabled an efficient offense.
“I thought (Smith) did a 
fantastic job of doing that 
defensively,” 
Rosen 
said. 
“Because it’s from setter to 
hitter, it’s bam bam, and they 
had to be really good at making 
adjustments, so I thought it was 
a great opportunity for her. And 
believe me, she’s not going to 
ever see anything faster than 
what we saw there.”
Picking 
up 
on 
Denso 
Airybee’s 
tendencies was 
the 
turning 
point 
of 
the 
series. 
As 
every 
point 
passed, 
every 
set 
finished, 
the 
roar 
of 
the 
packed 
house in Kyoto 
quieted little by 
little, until nothing but silence 
answered the sound of the 
Foreign Team finishing a kill.
Four sets later, 25-22, 25-23, 
25-15, 26-24, and the Big Ten 
team prevailed, securing its 
only victory of the trip.
“They’re all rooting against 
you, and then you beat them so 
easily,” Smith said. “It’s just so 
silent and serene.”

Rosen and Smith: New country, new roles, the road to a win

EVAN AARON/Daily
Michigan coach Mark Rosen was tabbed to coach a group of Big Ten All Stars last summer that also included Michigan’s Natalie Smith on the Big Ten Volleyball Foreign Tour in Japan, where the team went 1-3 against the country’s best teams.

TIEN LE
Daily Sports Editor

Just finding 
what players 
do, what roles 
go well.

I thought that 
... it was really 
frustrating that 
first night.

You’re coaching 
players that 
you’ve actually 
coached against.

(Smith) can 
slide into your 
team and be 
comfortable.

