Photo by Jake McNeill: Members of the 2023 Marshall volleyball team, along with members of the student section, pose together for a photo with the state championship trophy after Marshall defeated Delano 3-0 in the Class AAA Championship on Nov. 11 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.

Heavy is the head that holds the crown. When a program is a perennial state championship contender, opponents view them with a target on their back. For the 2023 Marshall volleyball team, that target only grew in size when they started the season as eight-time state champions eying their second threepeat of the last decade. Sitting on press row at the state championship match, I even overheard one of the statisticians saying that they were sick of seeing Marshall win after its recent dominance. While the expectations weren’t necessarily fair for a group that wasn’t exactly full of varsity experience before the season — only four of the 18 players on the roster had played more than 12 varsity sets last season — they proved themselves quickly to be up to the challenge. 

“We definitely always want to prove the haters wrong. Losing a lot of seniors last year, people weren’t always expecting us to be as good. They certainly probably didn’t think we were going to win, but proving them wrong was really fun,” libero Kennedy Drake said.

“[Head coach Dan] Westby always says, ‘They hate us ’cause they ain’t us.’ We used that to fuel us a lot,” middle blocker Halla Jo Casavan added with a laugh. 

Still, even in a rebuilding year, Marshall can’t fly under the radar. The Tigers entered the season as the top-ranked team in the Minnesota Volleyball Coaches Association poll and had won 44 consecutive matches against in-state opponents in Class 3A or lower dating back to Sept. 2021 (that streak now sits at 70 consecutive matches after another perfect season against non-Class 4A competition). 

This was a group that wanted to hold itself to a high standard but, despite the lofty expectations outside the locker room, the Tigers weren’t looking at the state title on day one. Opposite hitter Morgan Bjella said that when they made their preseason goal sheets to hang on their lockers, the main focus was just to get 1% better each day. 

While improvement is a great goal to have, it’s a hard one to attain when a group performs as well as this year’s did so early on. They swept each of their first five opponents and, after a loss to Class 4A Lakeville South, swept six more. They didn’t let a non-Class 4A opponent capture a single set until the state tournament. Bjella, Drake and outside hitter Brielle Riess were the only players on the roster who had played in more than two-thirds of the team’s 2022 matches but the roster looked like a group of well-seasoned veterans from the jump.

“Just changing your perspective on things. So if you didn’t have significant time last year, now you’ve got to focus and be like, ‘Okay, what do I need to do to be successful right now?’ Just kind of taking it bit by bit,” Riess said of the key to the team’s early chemistry. 

The increase in responsibilities wasn’t just limited to players’ roles on the court. For Jayda Bednarek — a defensive specialist who played in 22 of the team’s matches last season — she viewed one of her big responsibilities as bringing energy and enthusiasm to the group. She said her sister, Lexie Bednarek, and Grace Ehlers were major sources of energy for last year’s team so, with them both graduating, she had to step up into that role herself.

“[Lexie] said it’s okay to be nervous but don’t let that come into play because that can affect playing on the court,” Jayda said when asked what advice her sister had for her ahead of the year. “Just be confident in yourself. We know we can do it.”

Among the ways Jayda recalled bringing the energy was through the team’s pregame rituals. After the group went to Bagels & Brew before each home game, each player making sure to sit in the same spot and order the same pregame meal, they’d mentally prep for the match by playing the 2015 song “Hit the Quan” by iLoveMemphis, swinging their arms around and dancing in the locker room to get hyped up. 

For others, their new roles had more to do with on-the-court play. Drake had a major role in last year’s championship as a defensive specialist, finishing fourth on the team with 163 digs, but she had to take things up a notch this year as she took over for Caitlyn Christenson as a full-time libero. For others, the change was even more drastic. Sophomore Brooke Gillingham hadn’t played a varsity set before the season but had to step into the role of last year’s All-State setter Lauren Wherry. Riess said she started working with Gillingham to develop chemistry last winter and, as a result, she looked a natural as she stepped into the role. 

“It took a few games to settle in and realize that this is what I’m going to do for the whole season. Obviously the first few games I was really nervous because I’ve never played varsity minutes and now I’m starting as a setter, but I knew that I had a role to fill,” Gillingham said, adding that watching Wherry being All-State last year and Maysa Gillingham being All-State the year before set a precedent for the role. “As I got going in the season, things started getting better. I started staying after with my hitters and working with them and everything started to click.”

Gillingham went on to finish the season with 1,128 set assists, the most of any player in the Independent’s 12 area schools this year. 

For most of the season, Marshall made the toughest competitors look like light work. The only time they seemed to struggle at all was at some of the larger tournaments. They didn’t lose a best-of-five match all season and of their five best-of-three losses, three came against Class 4A No. 6 Lakeville South and the other two came against Class 4A No. 3 Champlin Park. Bjella said that playing those top-tier teams, most of whom play volleyball year-round as opposed to rotating sports throughout the seasons, brings the best out of the Tigers. While they weren’t able to avenge those losses, Gillingham said those tournaments helped the Tigers learn to play better as a team.

“Just having energy together, celebrating each other more and just playing as a group instead of playing as individuals,” Gillingham said. “Coach Westby always said that teams that win are usually the better team. Like we play better together. When you’re playing a really good team across the net, you have to play together in order to win.”

For Drake, it was the Apple Valley Eagle Invitational on Sept. 22 and 23 that really put her confidence level in the team’s championship hopes over the top. The Tigers opened the day with a sweep of Class 4A Apple Valley and, after falling 2-1 to Champlin Park and Lakeville South, Marshall bounced back with another sweep of Class 3A No. 3 Northfield. 

“I think winning that game, being that they were ranked top 5 in our class, really added some confidence to our play after we beat them,” Drake said. “Obviously we still need to play well to beat the other teams but it added a little bit of confidence.”

Marshall won 10 straight matches after the Northfield match, including a 3-1 road win over 4A Moorhead. After taking a 2-1 win over 4A No. 5 Lakeville North and taking down St. Peter for their 10th straight Big South Championship (making the Tigers still the only conference champion in the conference’s history), they were ready to roll for the postseason.

As the stakes increased, with each match possibly being the Tigers’ last, the results didn’t Marshall swept its way through its section tournament with 3-0 wins over New Ulm, Willmar and Mankato West. Coincidentally, Marshall played Willmar in the football section semifinals the day after the volleyball section semifinals. Both times, the Tigers sent the Cardinals home packing. 

Ahead of the state tournament, the Tigers were already a decorated team. Aside from the obvious conference and section championship trophies, they were also honored with individual accolades. Riess and Bjella were both named to the MNVBCA All-State team, the latter of the two earning the nod despite battling much of the season through a lingering ankle injury she sustained in a match at Watertown, S.D. After the state tournament, Riess and Bjella were named to the All-Conference team along with Kennedy Drake and her sophomore sister Reese Drake, participating in her first season on varsity. 

Marshall started the state tournament with even more ease than they finished the section tournament, taking down DeLaSalle in the opener in straight sets. In the semifinals, however, they got their first real sense of adversity when Detroit Lakes threatened to upset Marshall with a first-set victory, 25-20. It was the Tigers’ first time dropping a set to a 3A opponent on the year. 

“We came out flat and, to Detroit Lakes’ credit, boy, they took advantage,” Westby said after the match. “You could just see the momentum building on their side of the net. They started doing everything really well and we had a number of hitting errors. Just not the start we wanted.”

Despite a rare challenge for the Tigers and some targeted jeers from the opposing crowd, the Tigers stayed composed and rattled off three straight wins to advance back to the finals for the third year in a row. 

“They’re trying to get in your head. They’re trying to get at you. Use it as motivation,” Bjella said. “Use it as motivation to go harder and to hit the ball harder and to get that dig. They’re trying to get in your head, just don’t let them. Use it for motivation.”

The Tigers stuck around after their victory to get a look at their next opponent in the Delano-vs.-Byron semifinal. Eventually, it became clear that Delano was going to win to set up a battle of the Tigers in the state championship.

“The student section from Delano started chanting, ‘We want Marshall,’ and the guy behind us goes, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ The whole team cracked up,” Riess recalled from watching the match. 

While Marshall had been the top team all season, stepping on the floor for the title match against the No. 2 Tigers was still intimidating. Delano wasn’t a team Marshall took likely; the Marshall Tigers had begun scouting them about six weeks prior to the state championship, Westby said. He added that what made them scary wasn’t just that they were talented but that they also knew how to play as a team.  

“There are three ways you can beat a team: you can out-skill them, you can out-work them, or you can out-team the… 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,” Westby said. “They were going to stay together and fight for each other.”

Marshall High School is two hours and 45 minutes from the Xcel Center while Delano is about two hours closer. The Marshall blackout crowd had a strong showing for the commute, but the sea of Delano orange on the opposite side of the red-and-blue court was much larger.

“The whole side was filled and before the game, they started chanting ‘D-H-S.’ It was probably one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard in there,” Bjella said.

Delano capitalized on the crowd energy early and jumped out to a 9-10 lead. With the first set locked in back-and-forth action, disaster struck for the Tigers when Riess went down with an ankle injury. She had already come into the day banged up with some bruised ribs and when she hurt her ankle, the trainer provided by the MSHSL didn’t have any tape, increasing the amount of time she had to spend sitting on the bench. Still, even players who hadn’t played much in terms of varsity minutes were ready for the challenge. Kyah Pinckney had played just six sets all season but stepped up to make a couple of digs and Laurel Ryks hadn’t played a varsity point before spiking the ball at the net for a kill that gave Marshall a 23-20 lead. 

“A highlight from the state championship game — not obviously that this is a good thing — but when Brielle got hurt, she’s a big player for us. And freshman Laurel Ryks got subbed in to hit outside and I think the look on our faces kind of changed after [she got that kill],” Gillingham said, adding that it changed their attitudes that they were going to get it done no matter what challenges Delano threw at them.

“It was a really special moment. You could tell on the court that we were all very excited that she did that. I’m surprised that she actually hit the ball, I thought she would just tip it, but she was confident,” Bednarek said with a laugh.

Riess returned to play late in the set as Marshall won 25-22 and proceeded to keep rolling to 25-13 and 25-19 wins in the last two sets to capture their third straight state title. Bjella, Riess and Gillingham were all selected for the All-Tournament team for their efforts. 

“Beating them and proving them [the opposing crowd] all wrong, like it doesn’t matter how big your fans are, your student section, how loud you are. The better team is going to win,” Bjella said. 

Marshall graduates Bjella, Riess, Kennedy Drake, Bednarek, Lydia Moore, Mackenzie Olsen and Halla Jo Casavan after this season. Bjella has committed to playing at the next level at Minnesota State Mankato, Riess and MSU Moorhead and Drake will be staying local at Southwest Minnesota State. Still, with Gillingham, Reese Drake, Avery Fahl and more returning, the Tigers just continue to reload rather than rebuild.