It is a fair distance — if you are driving, a bit fewer than 1,000 miles — from Kenosha to Springfield, Mass., site of this weekend's inaugural NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Championship.
           You want a real trip? Consider how far the Carthage men have come since the seniors on this year's team — libero Mike Bynon, setter John Condon, middle blocker Tyler Frings, outside hitter Randy Hansen and middle blocker Matt Yanz — played in their first match in January, 2009.
           Those Red Men finished the season with an 8-25 record, by far the worst season for a program in its eighth year. The Red Men followed that awful season with two very good ones, finishing third both years in the four-school Molten Division III Men's Invitational Volleyball Championship.
           This year's team is, perhaps, right where a senior-laden should be: challenging for a national championship. Four of coach L.J. Marx's seniors start, along with a potential all-American in sophomore setter Connor Wexter and sophomore right side player Pat Barry. The Red Men, ranked third in the April 17 American Volleyball Coaches Association Division III poll, take a 27-5 record — a school record for victories in a season — into a quarterfinals match against fifth-ranked Nazareth (N.Y.) College (27-8) at 7:30 p.m. (EDT) Friday, April 27 in Blake Arena on the Springfield College campus.
           This story really started more than half a year before Bynon, Condon, Frings, Hansen and Yanz arrived on campus. It really began when Marx, coach when the program made its debut in 2005, put his Carthage life on hold because of a crisis in his family life. In the fall of 2007 his nine-month old daughter, Madison was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer. Madison was treated at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Marx took a leave of absence two matches into the 2008 season. Marx and his wife, Dawn, became residents at the hospital. Carthage women's coach Leanne Ulmer guided the Red Men to an 18-15 record.
           “I thought I could be Superman and coach the team and travel back and forth to the hospital and take care of my daughter,” Marx says. “It just got to be too much. So I stepped away and (Ulmer) jumped in a couple matches into the season, which by no stretch of the imagination was an easy and comfortable thing for her to do. She did a great job keeping things rolling.”
 
In Touch, Out of Touch
           Madison's treatment lasted 54 weeks. Thankfully, almost five years later, Madison is doing great. “She's as healthy as can be,” Marx says.
           Because it would have been almost impossible to focus on Madison 24 hours a day, Marx was able to use recruiting as a tiny diversion from a world that had turned upside down.
           “It almost kind of gave me, from a personal standpoint, something to do for an hour a couple nights a week to get out of the hospital room and do something other than think about what we were going through at the time,” Marx says. “The challenging part was the actual phone conversations, talking to the boys about what my vision was for the future of the program. They would say, 'We'd love to come down to campus for a visit, or come to see the match next week.' It became challenging at times to say, 'Well, feel free to come to campus, but I probably won't be able to visit with you while you're on campus. If you come to the match, I obviously won't be there.' It made for some interesting situations.
           “I was in the hospital, and usually my daughter would fall asleep pretty early, from being beat up from all chemo and radiation for the day. I would go sit in the hallway, and make some phone calls while she slept.”
           Bynon remembers it well.
           “When you would talk to him on the phone, he would be in the hospital and Madison would be at checkups, and going through all that in the hospital,” Bynon says. “It was a very unique situation.
           “When I came (to visit the campus), he was here. He had not yet taken his leave of absence. Then he decided that it was way too much (to be close to his daughter and coach). But we were all still really in touch with him.”
           As Frings recalls, not EVERYONE was able to stay in touch with Marx.
           “I had lost contact with L.J. for quite some time,” says Frings, who attended Pius XI High School in Milwaukee, which, coincidentally, is about 2 1/2 miles from Children's Hospital. “I had shown up to a home match and an away match, and not seen him on the bench. The small walk-on offers that I had received at Division II schools, I kind of wanted to shy away from and stay close to home at Carthage. I had no idea what was going on. ... I didn't even know, was this guy even interested in me anymore?
           “All of a sudden, once he finally did get into contact with me, he explained fully what the situation was. I actually admired that, immediately, the fact that he realized there are more important things to life than just the game of volleyball. That he took himself away from the team to focus on family did show to me that this was a program I wanted to be a part of. Once I did come back into contact with him, it was right before the commitment. I knew that I had selected the right school, to not only for academics but volleyball as well.”
 
The Good Times Did Not Last
           In the early days of the program, there were second-place finishes in the Molten event in 2005 and '07. But 2009 was not '05 or '07. When Marx returned, Carthage was a lot closer to rebuilding than it was to reloading.
           “It was almost kind of like starting the program over again, to a point,” Marx says. “Figuring out who was who, and who did what, and get back in the rhythm of things for myself, as a coach who was gone for a year.
           “Some of the guys transitioning back to my style and philosophy versus Leanne, when she was coaching the team with her style and philosophy the year before. It was just an unusual two-year span.”
           Bynon grew up about three hours from Springfield in Burnt Hills, N.Y. He worked camps at the Springfield College, and expects to have a good number of family members in attendance at the NCAA Championship. Bynon's brother, Matt, is a sophomore libero/defensive specialist at 10th-ranked Rivier (N.H.) College, which plays second-ranked California Santa Cruz in the quarterfinal match right before Carthage's
           Bynon says finishing his playing days at Springfield is like coming “full circle,” in part because Carthage and Springfield were his final two choices. That circle could have been broken after his freshman season. It was not, and Bynon and his fellow classmates now joke about their first season at the collegiate level.
           “We watched a video of us when we were freshmen, and the way that we are now and the way we used to be are now is completely different,” Bynon says. “I think we came in and we expected to be successful. We all had pretty successful high school and club resumes and we'd all come from pretty good programs and we thought we were we pretty good, you know? Then we got here, and our first match was at Loyola, down in Chicago, a Division I team, and we just got wiped off the court. It was a pretty good wake-up call.”
           That wake-up call did not make Frings question whether things would be better down the road.
           “After that first season, anyone could have turned around and hit the door and said, 'Hey, I want to enjoy college, I want to enjoy just focusing on academics,' ” says Frings, fifth in Division III in blocks per set with 1.31. “We came together and said, 'We're going to ride this thing out, we're going to enjoy the journey, and we're going to work to get to the level we want to be at.'
           “We knew that that season may not have been a fluke, but it was definitely a learning moment for us. We took that and said, 'Hey, we'll stick together, we'll follow L.J.'s program, we'll follow his system.' And we definitely stayed as one cohesive group and took it to this level now, and we're trying to pass that down to the guys who are following us. Because the success can't just stop now, it can keep going.”
 
Success Helps Build Momentum
           In 2010, Carthage was picked to play host to the Molten Invitational. The big perk of being the host was an automatic bid into the four-school field.
           “A lot of people thought, a lot of the talk was, 'They're only in because they're the host,' ” Marx says. “So we kind of had a little chip on our shoulders. 'OK, we've got to make sure we don't finish fourth, to prove we belonged in the tournament.'
           “We lost to Springfield, which ended up being the national champion that year, in the semifinal match. Then we beat Nazareth in the semifinal to finish third.”
           Marx says that gave the program, which finished 21-12 in 2010, confidence. It experienced a payoff after its hard work.
           “That's when the ball really started rolling,” Marx says. “Last season, the guys really started understanding and believing that we can be really good. They very much took it to the next level. Brought in another talented group of guys, which would be this year's sophomore class. Filled in a few pieces that we were missing. We had two seniors, then this core group of juniors, and they really did a great job of helping the freshmen understand what we were doing in the process.”
           The Red Men were in the Molten field again last year. They lost a five-set match to Nazareth, which would beat Springfield to win the championship. The Red Men bounced back to beat Baruch College (also known as City University of New York) for third place.
           That brings us to 2012. Carthage has spent time ranked No. 1 among the 60 NCAA Division III schools. The Red Men won the West Division in the first season of the Continental Volleyball Conference. Carthage is 20-2 against NCAA Division III competition, both losses coming to the UC Santa Cruz. The Red Men lost to the Banana Slugs on March 3 in St. Louis, Mo., but beat them on the final day of March in Milwaukee when the Slugs were No. 1. The two teams met for a third time on April 14, with the top-ranked Red Men losing in the championship match of the CVC tournament. Carthage and UC Santa Cruz would meet a fourth time if both win their quarterfinals matches.
 
Flop Eventually Becomes a Flip
           Marx remembers what he said to his team after the 8-25 season. He talked about flipping that record. Flip the numbers. It took three seasons, but he has his flip, and more.
           It flipped for Condon last year, but not in a way he expected. He lost his starting spot to Wexter, who was named an AVCA second-team All-American and Newcomer of the Year. Instead of moping, Condon asked what he could do, and did what was asked.
           “He embodied, as a junior in college, everything that we had talked about in the program of what the ideal teammate is,” Marx says. Because of his attitude, he was named team MVP.
           “He is the first guy we call on when we need a serve that we know will be in bounds and on the right person,” Marx says. “He has the experience, the maturity, the calmness, that when we call on him he can do exactly what we ask him to do.”
           Condon, who earned the job as starting setter as a sophomore, is the textbook case of a guy who puts the team ahead of himself.
           I've always kept in mind the fact that we as a team want to strive for success, so I made it less about myself and I tried to make it more about the team,” Condon says. “This year, I'm a serving specialist, so I've been working on that, and trying to keep the team upbeat and motivated. I really appreciate that he has that trust in me, that I'll get the serve in and try my best to play defense. There's really not much I can ask for besides that. I'm working my hardest, and I appreciate that he sees that and is trying to get me in whenever he can.”
           The Red Men have two victories over Nazareth this season. Hansen, who has All-American-type numbers — second in Division III with 4.17 kills per set, ninth in hitting percentage at .361 and 32nd in digs at 2.27 — has a simple recipe for success this weekend.
           “Every one (of the teams in the final eight) is good,” Hansen says. “On the defensive side of the ball, no easy points. Every point's going to be a fight. ... Don't let that ball hit the ground. I guess it boils down to who wants it more. Heart.”
 
The Time is Right
           There is no better time to bring home the school's first national championship.
           “These guys, they've been through a bad season, they've been through some great seasons,” Marx says. “They've been battle tested. They understand, I don't want to say what it takes to win a national championship because we haven't done that yet, but they understand the level and the amount of time and commitment and effort it takes to become great.
           “That's part of why we're where we're standing right now, going into the national tournament. They get it. They get the effort that it takes every day at practice. They understand that it takes time in the weight room. They understand that your HAVE to sit down and watch film and do your homework on the programs that we're gonna play.”
           Regardless of what happens in Springfield, the guys who will be leaving will always remember the journey.
           “I'm really proud of the seniors,” Hansen says. “Our freshman year, we were awful. All of us stuck together. By no means was it easy. Where we are now, I couldn't imagine going from where we were to where we are without that group of guys.”
           Yanz seconded Hansen's feelings.
           “I just know that they're some of the best friends and brothers that I could ever ask for,” Yanz says. “They're always there for me when I need it. It's an absolute blast to be around them all the time. Never a dull moment.”
 
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