Photo by Samantha Davis Marshall’s Dan Westby, right, walks across the sideline of Williams Arena in Minneapolis during the Class AAA girls basketball semifinals against Cretin-Derham Hall on March 13. Westby was named the Independent’s Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.

MARSHALL — Coming off a section runner-up finish, the Marshall girls basketball team graduated three starters and a key rotation player ahead of the 2024-25 season. Despite the losses, the Tigers managed to still improve by leaps and bounds, finishing as state runners-up. The Tigers’ dominance all season long and the marked improvement of many of their players individually earns head coach Dan Westby the nod as the Independent’s Girls Basketball Coach of the Year. 

While the Tigers’ talent was evident from the start of the season, it was built much earlier. The team worked hard to build chemistry and hone their talents in the offseason, and the potential was quickly apparent.

“You don’t always want to take a lot of stock in what you accomplish in the summertime, but… You could just see that there was the possibility for something special to come from this group,” Westby said, citing the way the team meshed. He added that this year’s group was fun to work with in the gym for the way they were willing to fight tooth-and-nail for each other. 

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say that most of these games, I just enjoy sitting there being a fan and watching these guys,” Westby said. “There were a couple people in town that had never gone to a girls basketball game and then came to a couple of our games. I remember talking to some of those people on the way out and they say, ‘I’m coming back, this was fun.’ It’s fun to watch this group and they really are a fun group to watch.”

In particular, the returning backcourt duo of Reese Drake and Taleigha Bigler had a connection that benefited both each other as individuals and their team as a whole. The two finished first and second among the area’s 12 schools in assists per game, with 4.6 for Drake and 3.9 for Bigler. Bigler also led the area in 3-pointers made while Drake led the area in points per game, earning Independent Player of the Year honors in the process.

“I think [Bigler and Drake’s ability to facilitate the offense] made us tough to defend,” Westby said. “When you look at a kid like [Paige] Gillingham, she was the benefactor of a lot of that. She was able to get a lot of wide-open looks at the basket, and Avery Fahl was the same thing… those two kids knocked down a lot of shots all year, so just having Reese and Taleigha not only score from the outside, but get to the basket as well just opened things up for everybody else.”

While the Tigers had a wide array of offensive options, defense remained a priority for the Tigers. Gillingham was a versatile defender that could guard any position, Bigler and Drake gave the Tigers top-tier perimeter defense while Fahl and Avery Schneekloth locked down the paint for the Tigers. Westby said that Schneekloth’s development as a shot blocker gave the Tigers a defensive dimension they haven’t had in a while, and she was also a consistent rebounder alongside Gillingham in the low post.

While Schneekloth saw limited playing time as a freshman, seeing action in 11 games for an average of just under 80 seconds, she grew into an everyday starter for the Tigers in her sophomore season this year. She increased her scoring average from 1.1 points per game up to 10. Her 24 blocks were more than the rest of the team combined (22), and seven of her blocks came in the first two rounds of the Class AAA state tournament.

“[Her spot time last year] gave her a window into thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I can do this,’ and then she had a good summer with those kids and I think her confidence just kept growing and growing,” Westby said of Schneekloth. “It was a result of what she was willing to do and what those other kids were able to provide for her.”

Westby also coached the Marshall girls volleyball team to the state tournament in the fall, finishing as state runners-up, and took the court again for basketball just a few short weeks later. Drake, Fahl, and Kezlyn and Kyah Pinckney each got significant playing time for the volleyball team, but showed no signs of fatigue as they got right back into action for the winter sports season. Rather than getting off to a sluggish start after just completing a long season, the Tigers rattled off 21 consecutive wins to start the season.

Part of that, Westby said, can be attributed to the team’s season opener against Alexandria. The Cardinals had just defeated the Tigers in the state volleyball championship game, so Westby said the Tigers had a bit of extra motivation to come out strong against Class AAA’s No. 3 volleyball team at the time. He added that home-court advantage also helped the team gain an extra level of comfort and confidence.

“Once we got that first win, because we had been down a couple of times in that game [by as many as 9 points in the second half] and came back, I think once we got that win that this group really realized that we can do something special here,” Westby said. 

Marshall went nearly unchallenged for the next two months after their season opener. They won 19 of their next 20 games by double digits, with 17 of those wins coming by at least 20 points. 

The streak finally ended with a 59-56 loss to Orono in Delano, a game that Westby said came down to Orono making a few more plays in the game’s waning minutes. Still, rather than getting discouraged by the loss, the Tigers rattled off another nine consecutive wins heading into the state championship game.

“I think for our kids, it didn’t matter who we were playing. Our kids did a great job of adjusting defensively,” Westby said. “We played a team that was strong inside, I thought we came out with good inside defense. If we played a team that was strong in the perimeter, I thought we were able to adjust to that as well. So this team was able to do a number of different things defensively and I think that was a reason for our success.”

The Tigers’ consistency earned them the No. 3 seed at the state tournament, something Westby said was important for the team because it felt that it could make some noise if it just continued to play as it had all season.

Westby added that with a team full of players accustomed to the big stage between the two seasons, the team felt comfortable and confident despite falling a game shy of reaching the state tournament a year prior.

Marshall looked the part of a veteran team at state, defeating No. 6 Rock Ridge 67-51 in the quarterfinals and No. 7 Cretin-Derham Hall 57-48 in the semifinals before falling 73-57 to top-seeded Benilde-St. Margaret’s in the state finals. Still, while Benilde-St. Margaret’s graduated 8 seniors after the season, the Tigers graduated just one, Gillingham, and will return the rest of their roster for next season.

Despite the high standard this year’s young group set, Marshall isn’t taking anything for granted next year. St. Peter and New Ulm will both be strong programs, as will Section 2AAA newcomer Jordan, Westby said. He also noted that the Cretin-Derham Hall team that Marshall faced in the semifinals was particularly young, with three eighth graders playing an average of 24 minutes in the matchup against Marshall and another freshman playing 17 minutes. As such, it will be a challenge for the Tigers to return, but one the team is up to.

“We’ve beefed up our schedule a little bit, so our regular season will be tougher this year, but we should be a tough team to deal with,” Westby said. “You’ve still got to play the games and the hope is that these kids are still hungry and they want to get better and they want to come into the gym and work hard every day this summer. If they do those things, we’ve got a shot.”