Photo by Jake McNeill: The Marshall volleyball team storms the court after the Tigers swept Delano in the Class 3A state championship at the Xcel Energy Center on Saturday night.

ST. PAUL — It’s a rare sight to see the Marshall volleyball team drop a set. After winning 3-1 in the Class 3A semifinals against No. 4 Detroit Lakes on Friday, the Tigers had no intention of dropping another in the finals on Saturday. Marshall came out on top of No. 2 Delano in the battle of the Tigers for the state championship with a 3-0 sweep. The win gives Marshall its third consecutive state championship.

“Every team is different. This team is a lot different than the team we had a year ago and we start in the summer. We start putting things together and you hope to ascend to this point and you never know,” Marshall head coach Dan Westby said. “They peaked at the right time. I just couldn’t be prouder of how hard they battled tonight. That Delano team has a tremendous team. There’s a reason they’re in the state championship, they’re an outstanding team. They’re a lot like us… a combination of sophomores and seniors and they’re going to make some noise again next year. I would almost bank on it.”

Neither team was able to pull out a lead of more than two points for more than half of the first set. It wasn’t until a Brielle Riess service ace that Marshall was able to pull out a 16-13 lead. Delano called a timeout and, shortly thereafter, Riess went to the bench with an ankle injury. For many teams, losing an All-State outside hitter in the state title match can mark disaster. For Marshall, it’s just the next girl up.

Even with Riess on the bench, Marshall continued to power forward. In addition to All-State right side Bjella, among the players who rotated in were sophomore Kyah Pinckney and freshman Laurel Ryks. In her first playing time of the state tournament, Ryks sent a spike down just inside the left pin for her first kill of the tournament to give Marshall a 23-20 lead. Westby said after the match that he was proud of the Marshall substitutions for going in the game and competing at a high enough level to help the team win without missing a beat.

Cassie Wegman and Lucy Fobbe got consecutive kills to cut the deficit to just a point before a Mackenzie Olsen kill and a Delano attacking error gave Marshall a 25-22 win. Riess returned to the match in the final moments of the set.

“Just knowing that my teammates will pick up any slack that I have, they’re just always there,” Riess said of her return to the match after limping up the stairs in the press conference room. “They were cheering and they were there for me when I was down, but then we worked together and we fought through it.”

While the first set had nine ties and three lead changes, the second set had just one lead change and found itself tied no later than 3-3. The Delano Tigers jumped out to a 3-1 lead on a Fobbe kill and a pair of Marshall attacking errors. The second attacking error came on a Riess hit but she bounced back expeditiously with kills on four of the next five points, the other being a kill from Morgan Bjella. Riess finished the set with seven of the Marshall Tigers’ 12 kills on just 15 attempts.

Delano called a timeout after a Brooke Gillingham service ace but, after coming out of the huddle, Gillingham had an ace and a kill with a Delano hitting error in between to cap off a 9-0 Marshall run and give the Tigers a 10-3 lead. Gillingham also had 37 set assists with one error on the night. Delano setters Grace Danielson and Lexi Champeau combined for 24 assists and an error.

Delano never got any closer than five points for the remainder of the set. Marshall stretched out their lead steadily as the game progressed. Leading 19-13, Marshall closed out the set with six unanswered points. Riess got a pair of kills and Bjella got a third before Gillingham’s third ace of the set put the Tigers up by double figures. They finished the job quickly from there with a Delano hitting error and Bjella and Olsen combining for their third respective block assists of the set, giving Marshall a 25-13 win.

Bjella was the picture of efficiency on the night. She had nine kills and her .276 hitting percentage trailed only Wegman’s .429 rate on 10 kills. Bjella also had a match-high five block assists while Olsen added another four.

Much like the first set, the third set started out highly competitive. Neither team was able to pull ahead by more than 2 points until, trailing 10-8, Marshall went on a run. Reese Drake got a kill and a service ace to start the run. After Kayla Heinonen got a kill for Delano, Riess had a six-point stretch in which she got four kills and a solo block to put the Tigers up 16-11. From there, a Reese Drake kill, a Delano hitting error and yet another Riess kill gave Marshall an 11-1 run and a 19-11 lead. The set was Riess’ second of the match with 7 kills. She finished the night with 18 kills, more than Delano’s two leading hitters combined, on efficient .261 hitting. She also had six digs and an ace in the match.

Delano made a late effort to try to come back, cutting the deficit down to as few as three points. Still, Marshall closed out the match, 25-19, on a 4-1 run courtesy of kills by Bjella and Avery Fahl and three Delano attacking errors.

“If you’d have told me we were going to sweep them, I’d have maybe taken that bet,” Westby said after the win. He said Marshall started watching Delano about six weeks ago and was consistently impressed with their ability on the court.

“There are three ways you can beat a team: you can out-skill them, you can out-work them or you can out-team them… your team is so strong and so unified that nothing will stop them and when I think of that Delano team, they are a true team. That was the one part that scared me coming into this match,” Westby said. “They were going to stay together, fight for each other and that sort of thing, but our kids were magnificent tonight, they were. Boy, they just battled and scrapped and clawed.”

Kennedy and Reese Drake were defensively dominant for the state-champion Tigers. Kennedy finished the match with 18 digs, trailing only Delano’s Kaelyn Wittwer’s 22, while Reese added another 14. Reese also had 10 kills and a pair of aces, both good for second-most in the match. The Drakes’ defensive play, along with Jayda Bednarek’s 11 digs and Lydia Moore’s eight, helped hold Delano to a .046 hitting percentage. By contrast, Marshall hit .175 as a team on the night.

Like last year’s group, this year’s championship team was chock-full of seniors. The state finals were the last high school match for Bjella, Bednarek, Riess, Moore, Olsen, Kennedy Drake and Halla Casavan, all of whom have won a state title with the team before.

“It’s really bittersweet. It’s like you’re excited, we just want a state championship, but it’s also sad because that was our last game together as Tigers,” Bjella said.

Westby added all three seniors at the post-match presser – Riess, Bjella and Kennedy Drake – had to step into larger roles after the team graduated another large group of seniors after last season’s title run. Riess and Bjella split time as middle blockers and hitters last year before switching to full-time hitting duties this season after Leah Jones graduated. Drake took an increased role on the defensive side after transitioning from a defensive specialist to a libero following Caitlyn Christenson’s graduation.

“All three players were just, they were truly leaders on our team,” Westby said.

Bjella, Riess and Gillingham were each named to the Class 3A All-Tournament team.

While Marshall is losing a large group of key contributors from this run, Gillingham, Fahl and Reese Drake are all just sophomores. Fahl is the only one of the three who had varsity experience prior to this season. The future remains bright for the Tigers.

Marshall wraps up this season at 30-5. Three of their five losses came against Class 4A No. 6 Lakeville South and the other two came against Class 4A No. 3 Champlin Park. Marshall still has not lost a match to an opponent lower than Class 4A since a 2-1 loss to Minneota in the Southwest Challenge in 2021. Marshall only had one more loss that season — 2-1 to Class 4A Eagan – and went on to sweep its way through the state tournament for the first of what is now three consecutive state championships.

“One of their goals that they wrote this year was to improve one percent every day. If you do that, if you look at things that way, there’s only really two matches I feel like you should look at: the last one and the next one,” Westby said. “If you look at how well you did the last match and then say, ‘Okay, now we need to take another step to get ready for the next match.’

“We took our lumps this year. We got beat by Lakeville South three times and we weren’t happy about that. And they were a good team, I don’t want to take anything away from them. We feel like we should get better if a team beats us. We feel like we ought to come around the next time and not let it happen again and we didn’t do that. We lost three times and we lost to Champlin Park twice. That was disappointing but fortunately, we didn’t have to play those teams and, fortunately, this group figured it out at the right time.”

Marshall came into the state tournament with a state-record eight championships. They now have nine, all of which have come in the last 19 seasons. The win also marked the second three-peat of the Westby era, the first coming from 2011-13. While the Tigers are graduating a large group, if there’s one thing history has taught volleyball viewers in Southwest Minnesota, never count out Marshall from going back again next year.