Overview:
Michelle Ohwobete has moved up among the kill leaders in NCAA women's volleyball while leading UCSB to first place in the Big West Conference and a No. 25 ranking in the AVCA coaches' poll
The Star-Spangled Banner begins in a low crouch before leaping into a crescendo.
Michelle Ohwobete knows all about its ascending scale as the springy singer on the UC Santa Barbara women’s volleyball team.
“It is a difficult song,” said Ohwobete, who serves the Gauchos as both their top pin hitter and national anthem singer.
“It’s an especially difficult song when you’ve lost your voice the night before, screaming during your match.”
She nevertheless has paired the two pursuits into beautiful harmony this fall for UCSB’s resoundingly successful program.
The Gauchos, 20-2 overall and 10-0 in the Big West Conference, have asserted themselves with an 11-match winning streak.
It’s given them a two-game lead over perennial powers Long Beach State and Hawai‘i in the league standings.
They also climbed into the national rankings for the first time since 2005, slotting in at No. 25 in this week’s vote of the American Volleyball Coaches Association.
“The maturity of our players and the development of our chemistry have made for a great combination,” Ohwobete told Noozhawk. “It’s really been a great recipe.”
Her singing stirs the catapultic springs in her legs and powerful swings of her right arm.
Through games of Oct. 19, she ranked 28th nationally in point scoring (339.5), a statistic that combines kills, service aces, solo blocks and block assists. She’s 32nd in total kills (290).
She reached the milestone of 1,000 career kills before a large Thunderdome crowd that cheered on the Gauchos to a dramatic, five-set victory over Hawai‘i on Oct. 13.
“I wasn’t aware of that before it happened, but I am extremely grateful for it,” Ohwobete said.
“I give it up to the team because none of it would be possible if not for them, and the reps with them, and the people supporting me.”
Ohwobete has reached such lofty stature despite her relatively pedestrian height of 5-foot-10.
“She’s an explosive athlete all across the board,” UCSB coach Matt Jones said. “I believe she tests out as one of the best — if not the best — pound-for-pound athletes in our department.
“She’s just crazy strong. She lifts a ton of weight, hits the ball really hard and jumps super high.
“She has other attributes, too, like her hand-eye (coordination). Her development, especially with the ball-control stuff, has been so fun to watch.”
Her strength, buoyed by nearly a decade of weight training, also offsets her relative lack of height as a blocker.
“If the ball hits square into her hand, you get blocked every time because she has so much upper-body strength,” Jones said. “You’re not going to blow her up at the net.”
Singing on Sundays
Her voice projects with the same strength. Ohwobete, the second of four daughters in the family of Nigerian immigrants Grace and Austine Ohwobete, began singing at the age of 5.
“I grew up in a musical family,” she said. “My mom would sing in church, and then we’d all sing in church. That always stuck with me.
“I’ve always known that my life outside volleyball and school would be music.
“I don’t know what it’s going to look like, and I honestly don’t want to know. I just want to work hard at it and follow whatever strikes my interest.”
But volleyball, she insists in the next breath, comes first for now.
“I do spend a little bit of time before the match and during the week to get myself ready vocally,” Ohwobete began. “But I’ve talked to Matt and Chad (Gatzlaff, UCSB’s associate head coach) about this, and they know that when I’m in season, I’m just giving my all to volleyball.
“Everything else is secondary.”
Her devotion to the sport can seem as over the top as her high-flying spikes.
As the season progresses, the regulars will be sent home during the latter part of a long practice so the coaches can work with the reserves who receive little playing time.
But Ohwobete will simply jump into line with the backups.
“Early on, we’d kind of push back a little on that,” Jones said. “We’d go, ‘Hey Michelle, we really want you to take the rest here, so just show up when regular practice starts.’
“But at some point, we were like, ‘This kid is just built different.’ She can handle it, so we’re not going to tell her no.
“She’s also a different level of athlete in a lot of ways. She can handle a bigger load than most people, and it’s fun to watch.”
Volleyball has been Ohwobete’s passion since her early teens. She led Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School to the CIF State Division 1 final while receiving honorable mention on the Prep Volleyball All-America Team.
“When we recruited her,” Jones recalled, “I could see how big a load she carried for her club team (Red Rock Volleyball).”
Poster Child
Ohwobete remembers hearing the name Brian Shaw — a Bishop O’Dowd graduate who continued on to basketball fame at UCSB and the NBA — during her high school years.
“His kids (B.J. and Bianca) went to school with me,” she pointed out. “When I got here, I saw his (Legend of the Dome) poster up in the Thunderdome and made the connection … ‘Oh! That’s who I’ve been hearing about all these years!’”
She came to UCSB as part of a heralded, six-player class that former head coach Nicole Lantagne Welch put together with Gatzlaff and Jones.
Briana McKnight — another pin hitter they recruited from Xavier College Prep in Scottsdale, Arizona — forms a potent one-two punch with Ohwobete.
They had to endure a freshman year that had its season canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic to get to this season’s success.
“We went through that entire process of not being able to practice, and then getting to practice only on grass,” Ohwobete said. “We had to keep our distance from each other, and we had to keep sanitizing balls every time we used them.
“Where we’re at right now is the culmination of a lot of the challenges and battles we had to fight through. We went through that roller-coaster ride together, and now we’re rising to the top of that.”
They faced a new challenge last spring when Lantagne Welch stepped down as coach. Jones was promoted to the head job while Gatzlaff returned after having taken a two-year hiatus.
“There was the adversity of going through those changes,” Ohwobete said. “We had to get all the freshmen bought in and locked into the vision that Matt had for our program.
“But it’s gone great. I love Matt as a coach. I can’t wait to see what that this program looks like 10 years from now.”
She played a part in developing UCSB’s athletic future by serving last year as the student-athlete representative on the search committee to hire a new director of athletics.
Chancellor Henry Yang agreed with the committee’s recommendation and promoted Kelly Barsky to the position.
Barsky had been the point person guiding all Gaucho teams through the protocol they faced during the pandemic.
“I heard Kelly’s name a lot when I came in as a freshman,” Ohwobete said. “Now I obviously know her a lot more personally, and see how involved she is with what goes on in my life in athletics and on our team.”
Ohwobete won Big West Freshman of the Year honors when she finally got to play in 2021. She is certain to gain her third all-league first-team selection at the end of this season.
Student of the Game
Her inner drive also has taken her a long way as an honors student in economics. She was picked to last year’s Big West All-Academic Team.
She had been heavily recruited by the Ivy League, ranking Dartmouth among her finalists before choosing UCSB.
“I wanted the academics combined with the competition that Santa Barbara offers,” Ohwobete said. “It also obviously has a really great, beautiful location.”
The question of either playing another season as a graduate student or continuing on to professional volleyball does prey on her mind at times.
She prefers, however, to concentrate on the present.
“We’re almost at midterms, and we’re halfway through the season,” she said. “Everything is just going so fast, so it’s hard for me to think about it.”
She’s always been a cerebral student-athlete, Jones said.
“She’s super-mature,” he said. “She’s very introspective — very self-aware about her strengths and weaknesses.
“That kind of focus and determination can sometimes turn into tunnel vision. We do play a team sport.
“But her ability to just connect with teammates and think about everything that’s happening on the court and not just her performance has grown tremendously.”
Ohwobete keeps her music career in the background during volleyball season no matter how many national anthems she’s asked to sing.
She did perform last winter in “The Battle of the Bands” event that the Associated Students Program Board promoted at The Hub inside the University Center.
“It was nice that it was out of season so I had a little more time to be all about the music,” she said. “It was really nerve-wracking, thinking back on it, but it was so much fun, too.
“My goal is to really get involved in Isla Vista’s musical scene when I have my own time.”
But while volleyball scores rate higher than musical scores these days, they also can go hand-in-hand.
“I’ve picked up a lot of habits and disciplines in music and volleyball that overlap,” Ohwobete said. “And the same goes for school.
“I’m getting lots of opportunities to find that sweet spot where I’m nervous but know how to handle it.”
And it’s all been in concert this fall for the golden voice of Gaucho volleyball.
