Couch: MSU volleyball leans on international recruits to accelerate program rebuild

EAST LANSING – It’s an unwillingness to settle for less in recruiting that’s driven Leah Johnson and her staff abroad to help build Michigan State’s volleyball program.

To places like Warsaw and Chrzanow, Poland. To Istanbul and Kadikov, Turkey. To Christchurch, New Zealand. These are hometowns of five of the Spartans’ freshmen and sophomores as Year 2 of the Johnson era of MSU volleyball gets underway.

MSU (1-2) is home for the first time this season this weekend — twice Saturday (10 a.m. and 7 p.m.) and on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m.) against Belmont, Syracuse and then Delaware State — as the Spartans host the Kathy DeBoer Invitational at Breslin Center.

If you go, you’ll likely see freshmen Karolina Staniszewska and Taylah Holdem and sophomore Nil Okur on the court a ton. Perhaps sophomore Selin Aslayan, too. Freshman Zuzanna Kulig is working her way back to full health, but is also expected to have an impact when she’s ready to play.

They were each recruited separately for their ability to impact the program, for their advanced skill and for their experience, in some cases against professionals and playing for and against national teams.

For Johnson, who wants her team to push for a postseason bid in her second season — or, “If we can’t make it, we’d better be hungry by the end that we’re so close” — this is the best way she knows to move the process along.

“I wanted to get more competitive and more skilled, so that we start to win the 50-50 games,” Johnson said. “Then we can go get more physical and ideally that's a domestic player. But I have no qualms, I’m going to recruit the best talent. I don't care where they live, where they're from, what they believe, I love them all.

“I’m not going to compromise any of our recruiting domestically. Because if I'm not getting a top 10, top 20 player, then I'm not going to take them. They're not going to move the ball forward. … If that’s not a top 20 or top 50 recruit, there's a skill gap between them and the international player that I can pick up.”

So right now, in the relatively early stages of a program rebuild, Johnson is leaning into her international connections — some of which date back to her early days as a head coach at SIU-Edwardsville in the 2010s.

“I didn't always get (the international recruits) right away. But I started building that network and creating the trust with those contacts, so that they knew consistently over the course of my career who I was and what they were going to get from me,” Johnson said. “I think they trust that and they want to send their athletes somewhere where they're going to be taken care of. And I think we take very good care of people here.”

It was one of those early contacts from her time at SIU-Edwardsville that, a decade later, connected Johnson to Okur, who’s from Istanbul and has been a mainstay in the lineup as a middle blocker since she arrived.

With all five international players, their recruitment was part necessity and part affinity for what foreign players can bring. When Johnson arrived at MSU in February of 2022, she had just seven players on the roster and the sport was already entering the 2025 recruiting cycle, with recruiting classes to fill in-between.

“You're not going to find a Big Ten(-recruited) player sitting around, waiting,” Johnson said. “So it kind of forced our hand in that sense. But I also like the experience international players bring. They're often more unfazed by challenges or difficulty. … They're looking for more during their college experience than (some American players).”

The relationships with MSU’s foreign players weren’t cobbled together in haste, even if the players were needed quickly. Staniszewska and Holdem first heard from MSU assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Jake Barreau when he and Johnson were still at Illinois State.

“I wanted to play in the Big Ten, obviously, so when I find out they were switching universities, I was more interested,” Staniszewska said. “I stuck with them. It was a long process, but I really like their perspective in volleyball and how the atmosphere was there. So I decided to try.”

She committed before ever stepping foot on campus — which she did for the first time at the end of June — though Barreau did visit Staniszewska in Poland in December, she said, after she had already signed.

Holdem, from New Zealand, made the trip to MSU in March of 2022, before she committed. It was her first of several visits to American universities.

“I fell in love with the culture and the team. It was amazing,” said Holdem, who had international success in beach volleyball, but prefers the indoor game.

A week later, she committed to Spartans.

While some of these countries have rich volleyball traditions, they don't have college sports. It’s either/or — either you’re pro or you attend a university.

In Turkey, for example, “they're a top four national team,” Johnson said. “Their club ranks are elite and competitive. And professional leagues are very good, well-funded, and you make good money over there as a pro. So they come from an experience that's like, ‘We expect to be good. I want to get my education. I can't do both in Turkey.’ So this is what we can provide (in the U.S.).”

They also provide an atmosphere unlike the international players are used to — and Staniszewska and Holdem felt it in the Spartans’ opener last weekend at Arkansas in front of a raucous crowd and sometimes crude student section.

“It was definitely a culture shock there,” Holdem said. “Just that atmosphere was way louder than I thought it was going to be.

"(The students) were brutal. I didn’t know they were allowed to cheer while you were serving. … We’re very quiet, reserved people in New Zealand. There was a lot going on there.”

Added Staniszewska: “When I was standing and it was the (national) anthem, I was like, ‘Wow, I made it. I'm here finally.’ And that was such an out-of-body experience. I was physically there. My mind was full of different thoughts.”

There are advantages, they say, to not doing this alone. When Holdem arrived last January, Okur and Aslayan were able to guide her through the adjustment. Now she’s able to help Staniszewska and Kulig.

“Moving away so far from home, like, when we have breaks, everyone goes home, we kind of like hang out together on campus,” said Holdem, who doesn’t know if she’ll go home next at Christmas or next summer. “It’s a lot of money (to fly home).”

Johnson doesn’t plan to stop recruiting internationally. They already have one international verbal commitment for 2025. The plan moving forward is to try to see the players in person before they’re even able to talk to them — just like they would with domestic recruits — so they get a sense for the player and she can see them in the gym, wearing the MSU gear and know that they cared enough to make the trip.

“Then when that call comes, there is a sense of familiarity,” Johnson said. “And that's an advantage. And so what we don't spend in dollars to bring them here for a visit, we spend to go see them. And that's kind of a compromise.

“It’s fun to have international athletes. You come here, we have everything you need. (As a pro overseas in volleyball), you're training yourself on the road, you do your own weight training, you manage your own nutrition as a pro. You don't have all these people that we have (as a support system). And so they walk in and they're like, ‘Wow, all these people are here to help me?’ It's a flip almost of gratitude. And I think that's a really healthy space to be in right now.

“There's a humbleness. I'm a tough coach. But I know they've been coached really tough, especially in Europe. You're playing with grown women when you're 14. So it's different. You grow up fast.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU volleyball leans on international recruits to accelerate rebuild