Farmington Hills Mercy’s Julia Bishop wins Michigan’s Miss Volleyball award

By Jared Purcell | japurcell@mlive.com

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- For the first time ever, the Miss Volleyball award is staying at the same school it was at for the year prior as Farmington Hills Mercy senior setter Julia Bishop became the second-straight player from her school to win the honor.

Bishop, a 5-foot-11 talent heading to play at Michigan State next year, won the annual award from the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association by collecting 227 voting points from member coaches. Jenna Reitsma from Lowell was not too far back with 192 points.

“I’m just beyond honored to just be named for this, let alone win it,” Bishop said. “It’s just amazing.”

Bishop accepted the senior-only award at an outdoor ceremony held in front of Mercy High School, joined by family, friends and teammates. To make the moment even more special, Mercy senior middle hitter was also one of the finalists for the award.

“That’s unreal,” Bishop said. “I’ve never even heard that happening. It’s just amazing. Her coming here and celebrating with us, it’s just great to know that she puts what she wants aside just to celebrate with our team. She’s been teammates with mine since we were both 10, so it’s great because it’s just so much more than volleyball. It’s a friendship that will last a lifetime.”

This season, Bishop helped lead Mercy to the Division 1 state quarterfinals where it lost a tough five-set match to rival Bloomfield Hills Marian. She finished the season with 1,013 assists, 192 digs, 119 kills, 34 blocks and 65 aces in 95 sets played.

“Sometimes I think the setter is a little underappreciated,” Atiemo said. “Julia is always running her butt around, getting balls up and giving us the bests sets she can for us to knock down. I just feel like as a team, collectively, we all appreciate Julia and she works super hard to make us look good.”

Meanwhile, Bishop deferred a lot of her success to her teammates.

“As a setter, it’s obviously super hard to win that because I wouldn’t be anything without the pass,” Bishop said. “It’s crazy to say, but if the pass isn’t there, the setter can’t do anything. I think it really shows that it’s not an individual sport and it really shows that I can’t do anything without everyone else. It’s a lot of relying on other people as a setter, but it’s obvious that relying means trust and everyone puts their trust in me to make decisions with the ball, and I put my trust in them. I feel like it shows Miss Volleyball ... was a team effort. It wasn’t really just me.” 192-14-\

Bishop was a four-year varsity player for Mercy, accumulating 5,575 career assists, which ranks her third all-time in the Michigan High School Athletic Association record books. If it were not for a shortened season due to a coronavirus shutdown delaying competition, she could have challenged the all-time assists record of 5,790 set by Novi’s Erin O’Leary in from 2014-17.

She also had 967 career digs, 600 kills and 233 aces and was a part of the the first ever volleyball state championship team for Mercy last season.

“Being able to be a freshman and being able to run an entire program for four year, being in the final four three years ... I think those kind of stats encompasses where she can get a team at,” Mercy coach Loretta Vogel. “To be able to go through that kind of competition day after day and the teams that we compete with, I think that really solidified where Jules is at -- and being able to make hitters look good, basically.”

Bishop is also a standout basketball player at Mercy. Despite the great talent Bishop possesses, Vogel said she will miss Julia’s personality the most.

“Even as a leader, that leadership role I think is important,” Vogel said. “When we would be in a difficult match, she would always have some pretty good comments to make. I think we relished that. It was always done in good taste.”