Dan Falloon
Michelle Cournoyer has come a long way since joining the Lakehead University Thunderwolves’ volleyball squad back in 2007.
The 20-year-old ex-Muskie was named captain prior to the 2009-10 season.
The promotion was a recognition of Cournoyer’s development at Lakehead. She joined Lakehead as a raw, easily-frustrated rookie but has since transformed into a calm, all-around player.
Head coach Chris Green, a former bench boss with the national men’s ‘B’ team, saw Cournoyer as the best fit for the role because her communication skills were well-developed.
“We named her captain this year after we did a review in search for someone who was going to provide the tools that we needed at that position, with those responsibilities that comes with being a captain,” recalled Green.
“What Michelle does for us is keeps people focused,” he stressed. “She’s constantly communicating, talking, which our game requires so much of.
“You go to a practice or a game, and the one person you hear from start to finish is Michelle.”
Cournoyer said she hasn’t made many changes in her style since the promotion, noting Green chose her for the role because of who she was before.
“I haven’t really changed anything I’ve been doing,” she noted. “I just try to motivate everyone and be positive.
“I guess my coach just saw that in me and decided that’s who he wanted to be captain.
“It’s a really honourable thing to get.”
One challenge Cournoyer has had to overcome since joining the Thunderwolves was her obvious frustration when a game took a turn for the worse. The ability to calm herself down has become even more essential with her newfound leadership role.
“When he [Green] asked me to be captain, it’s one of those things where I can’t focus on me,” said Cournoyer, who has played in a team-leading 52 games this season.
“I can’t focus on what I think I’m doing wrong.
“[Rather], I have to focus on being a leader and keeping my team motivated and be positive for everyone else, so if they see me getting upset with my performance, then it’s probably not going to motivate them.
“I’ve just learned to adapt and be more positive with my own actions, and that makes me be more positive towards the whole atmosphere of the team,” she remarked.
Cournoyer credited Green with helping her discover that she doesn’t have to be a flawless player—just one who continued to learn and grow as an athlete.
“Chris would talk to me a lot about it because you can’t be perfect,” acknowledged Cournoyer, whose 18 blocks rank second on the team while her 43 kills place her third.
“You have to focus on what you do well and improve things,” she stressed.
But it’s been more than just an attitude adjustment for Cournoyer. Green noted much of the disappointment came from her serve, which she has improved drastically since suiting up for Lakehead U.
“She’s learned to get that under control, and most of the frustration would come off of her serve,” he said. “In her mind, she knew where she wanted to serve, but it seldom went there.
“We changed her serve, her technique. We’ve gone over a lot of things she can do, and now her serve is no longer a concern,” added Green.
“When she would go back for her second or third serve in a set, I used to sub her out and put a server in. Now that thought doesn’t cross my mind unless I’ve got one on the bench who can really throw over rockets.”
Cournoyer said the main mantra with regard to her serve has just been to keep it simple.
“I used to do more of a spin serve because I’m a lot taller, and I have a little more of an advantage to spin the ball from the back court,” she recalled. “But it’s all in your toss, so if you don’t toss the ball right, your body’s going to have to make up for it.
“I would hit it out of bounds because I wouldn’t hit it where I was aiming, and my hips would turn, so he [Green] just taught me not spin serve as much, and not move my feet as much,” she noted.
“The more I move my body, the less accurate it’s going to be.
“It’s kind of gone from a spin serve to more of a float serve.”
Implementing the changes have been a trying process for Cournoyer, but the results have been worth it.
“It’s just one of those things that you have to stick with,” she stressed. “It’s frustrating and you have to try new things, but eventually you’re going to find something that works, and that’s basically what they did.
“Hopefully, it’ll continue to get better.”
Still, for all the grief that serving has caused Cournoyer, her other skills have improved much more smoothly, and, according to Green, are getting to the point where the Thunderwolves’ staff almost doesn’t appreciate how special they are.
“There’s so many things she does that you start to take for granted the things she does,” he admitted. “We actually raise the level of expectation for her every day, and sometimes we’ll treat some of the things she does as trivial, yet they’re so important.
“If anyone else was doing them, you’d be going, ‘Wow, great play.’
“For us, we really rely on Michelle to be that controller at the front, to make good choices, and direct traffic, per se, in the front row,” Green added.
“Our matches that we had against Queen’s this year, she really took all that off-season training and last year’s training and really mastered it with them and showed she’s a force.
“Even the coaches were commenting on how well our blocking and defence worked together,” he noted.
Cournoyer also admitted her commitment to quality doesn’t always allow her to step back and chart her own growth, but she knows she’s coming along by listening to the compliments of others.
“I’m a little hard on myself, so I don’t notice it as much as some of the other people do, but it’s nice to have coaches and teammates there to tell me how much I have improved,” she remarked.
“I just keep striving to be a better player.”
At this point, Cournoyer’s main area of expertise is defence as she is situated as a middle blocker. But what Green values is that Cournoyer is able to head up a strong transitional game so that the ball can get into the hands of the Lakehead attack.
“She’s in a position as a middle blocker, which for volleyball is one of those positions as the quarterback of the defence. Everything runs through them,” he explained. “She’s not going to be in a position to probably lead the conference in kills, in points scored.
“She has turned herself into, in the last two years, by far one of the best middle blockers,” he continued. “We keep two stats, the stuff block and the control blocks, which means balls that come off the block that we can dig and transition and play.
“She leads, probably by far, our team, for sure, and maybe one of the top control blockers in the conference.”
As is common in most sports, defensive players often don’t get to post gaudy numbers, and Green said the same holds true in volleyball. But when a play does turn into a statistic, it’s a big turnaround for the team.
“When you’re playing six-foot-twos and people that attack the ball fast and hard, blocking is one of the most frustrating activities in our sport,” he acknowledged. “You don’t get many blocks.
“The other team will attack 140 balls in a five-game match, or 130 balls in a five-game match, and you’re going to end up with six, seven, eight stuff blocks, so there’s a lot of jumping that goes on.
“Blocking has to be an integral part of your defence,” he stressed. “It has to channel balls, it has to deflect, and, of course, it has to get blocks when it’s the right time.
“Her work in that area over the last couple of years has really helped our defensive stats,” Green lauded.
Green said the Thunderwolves have some of the top diggers in the OUA, including Ashley Baer, who sits fifth in the conference at 3.81 digs per game, and Tessa Mandel, who is eighth at 3.73.
“A lot of that is because people like Michelle can channel balls to where we want them to be dug.”
Both Green and Cournoyer hope she will evolve into a more offensive-minded player in seasons to come, but for right now, paying attention to defensive detail is taking precedence.
“She’s really accepted her role,” said Green. “She’s frustrated because she doesn’t get more kills, but we’ve just got to keep her on track. That the area she needs to do well is control the other team’s offence.
“We’re going to push for her to become a more dominant blocker, and see if we can master some more offence,” he added. “We’re working on some more offensive weapons for her, some different kinds of sets with the setter.
“Some of them have been looking really good in practice, so we really want to open up her repertoire of attacks.
“Once you master the blocking and defensive side of things, that doesn’t usually go away,” Green explained. “We really need to do some work in the off-season to get her ready for next year offensively, and that’s going to require her being in the weight room quite a bit and in the gym working with myself and other coaches technically.”
Leadership also is expected from Cournoyer off the court, and Green complimented her for her work with a young Thunderwolves’ team that includes eight rookies and two sophomores on its 16-woman roster.
“She doesn’t treat the rookies like they’re babies, but she also doesn’t shy away from providing them with experience and leadership, so she really does a good job of keeping them focused and on task, and helping them understand the life of being on the road and studying,” he praised.
“She’s pretty serious about the things that she does.
“To be a university student is probably tough, but to be a university athlete, training five days a week, being on the road every weekend, being in the weight room three days a week, gameplan and video, put that in the daily schedule of anybody and it’s a tough life,” Green said.
“So she’s really good at helping the players understand, especially the younger ones, that there’s a certain lifestyle you have to lead playing university sports.”
Like with her serve, Cournoyer has learned to keep things simple with her strategy for balancing athletics and academics.
“Just being organized and trying to manage your time as best you can,” she advised. “It takes a little bit to get used to in first year, but initially when the ball gets rolling, you figure out what you need to do. Everyone’s different.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s absolutely fun,” she added.
Being such a young team, the Thunderwolves have struggled to a 1-14 record so far this season, but Cournoyer admitted being resigned to the fact that this season wasn’t going to be one of vying for a championship.
But with the new crop of recruits getting big-time experience under their belts this season, Cournoyer is more upbeat about her final two at LU.
“We have a lot of new girls, a lot of first-years, and because it is a rebuilding year, you just have to accept the fact that we’re not going to be perfect, and we’re not going to learn everything the first time,” Cournoyer reasoned.
“The talent that we have with our young girls is amazing. They’re really talented, and we’re only going to get better come next year.
“We usually have three to four first-years on the floor at a time because our veteran to rookie ratio is pretty close,” she noted.
“Everyone just has to learn from their mistakes and just realize that they are really talented,” Cournoyer added. “Then hopefully next year, after having the year, a building year, getting to know the game, getting to know the speed of the game.
“Coming from club, coming from high school, it’s a lot different, and it’s only expected that we’re going to keep learning.
“Once you get that out of your mind, it’s really good,” she stressed. “It’s been really fun and it’s been a lot of work, but it’s been worth every minute.”
Cournoyer admitted the leap from high school to university volleyball was a drastic one, and she struggled to pick up the speed of the game.
“It’s a lot faster,” she pointed out. “Your sets are lower and you’re passing faster.
“You have to be a lot more physically in shape,” she added. “Especially being a middle, you have to block both sides, and you have to get up and make sure you’re there for all the different plays you run.
“Getting used to timing was a huge thing for me because I really didn’t have it.”
Still, Cournoyer credited her high school coach, Duane Roen, with helping her nail down the basics of the sport while with the Muskies.
“He taught me a lot. He was a coach that went above and beyond what a lot of high school coaches did,” she lauded. “He was always buying books and reading up and going to clinics and everything to get his players to their highest potential.
“He always had a lot of faith in my skills, so it was nice having someone there to push me to be the best I could be and always had that knowledge of the game.”
Roen, who still is coach of Fort High’s senior girls’ squad, has travelled to Thunder Bay to take in some of Cournoyer’s matches—and has been impressed with what he’s seen.
“Her whole dedication to the game has really gotten much better,” he noted. “She’s really focused on what she needs to do to play better and to improve, and be part of the team at a higher level.
“She’s much more aggressive,” he added. “She was getting there in Grade 12, and we just ran out of season.
“I’m really happy for her that she’s still playing and doing really well,” Roen continued.
Although Cournoyer is committed to improving the Thunderwolves over the next two-plus seasons, her mind occasionally has strayed to her post-university plans, which have fluttered to playing in big games overseas.
“I kind of want to play pro ball in Europe when I’m done, so if I want to get there, it’s basically everything,” she said. “I’m a good player, and I’ve only improved every year I’ve been here.
“I think every place I can get better. I’m not perfect, and you can always strive to get better in everything.
“To be more fit, to eat better, it all affects your performance, and I’m going to try to improve everything as I go along and, hopefully, it will make me a stronger player,” she remarked.
