Photo by Jake McNeill: Minneota middle blocker Leah Coequyt (10) celebrates with teammates Eden Meagher (right) and Autum Anderson after a block during the 3A North subsection volleyball championship against MACCRAY on Thursday.

By Jake McNeill

jmcneill@marshallindependent.com

MARSHALL — After taking part in its ninth consecutive 3A North subsection championship match on Thursday, the top-seeded Minneota volleyball team is a win away from heading back to the state tournament. The Vikings overcame a 25-21 first-set loss with three consecutive wins, 25-21, 25-20, 25-20, to take down the No. 3 MACCRAY and secure their spot in Saturday’s 3A championship.

Despite some struggles in the middle of the first set, Minneota got into a groove early in the second set. A kill from Leah Coequyt, two more from Jaylyn Coequyt and a combined block between the two helped the Vikings claim each of the frame’s first 4 points.

After kills from Emma Thein and Ruby Hultgren trimmed Minneota’s lead to 13-7, the Vikings started to pull away. Eden Meagher picked up a kill and combined for a block with Leah Coequyt, while a pair of errors on the Wolverines allowed the Vikings to stretch their lead to double figures, 17-7.

MACCRAY was able to keep pace with the Vikings briefly but couldn’t cut into the lead, and a pair of kills from Gruenes after a MACCRAY timeout gave the Vikings the 25-15 win.

Leah Coequyt, meanwhile, led the Vikings defensively in the front row with five ace blocks while Jaylyn Coequyt and Gillund added another two each. Beyond the blocks she put up that landed for a point, Leah Coequyt got good tips on several others to slow down MACCRAY swings or force the Wolverines out of system, and she came up with six kills as well.

“Their two big hitters [Thein and Janssen], and all of their hitters, are amazing, but I think we do a really good job as a team of reading,” Leah Coequyt said. “We definitely practice a lot of things like when they open their shoulders and all that. Some hitters you can read well, and I feel like as a person at the middle from Minneota, we work on that a lot.”

Minneota head coach Kaley Buysse attributed Leah Coequyt’s success at the net to her knowing where the ball is and the tendencies of the hitters on the other side of the net, adding that she gave the team a lot of good touches and is always putting her hands up and over to do her best to help her team win.

Trailing 11-9 in the first set, MACCRAY found a rhythm to surge ahead. A pair of Viking attacking errors tied up the set and a pair of Eva Swenson aces helped the Wolverines pull ahead for a 14-11 lead when the Vikings called timeout.

MACCRAY’s lead hovered around 4 points until a block from Samantha Hultgren and Swenson prompted a Minneota timeout trailing 21-17.

A pair of Thein kills helped the Wolverines set up game point, leading 24-18. The Vikings found some momentum late in the set with a Sarah Gruenes service ace and kills from Gillund and Meagher, prompting the Wolverines to call a timeout, but a blocking error by Minneota after the timeout secured MACCRAY’s 25-21 win.

“We’re Minneota, and pressure is a privilege. There are a lot of teams out there that don’t get to be pressured, and we’re lucky to have that because teams want to beat us,” Leah Coequyt said of the set. “I think that once we came back to the huddle after that first set, we just were kind of like, ‘It’s either now or never. Each point matters and we need to pick up our heads. We can’t look down, you’ve got to look past it and have short-term memory loss.”

Minneota took its first lead of the opening set when consecutive hitting errors on the Wolverines put the Vikings up 3-2. The two teams battled back and forth from there, with MACCRAY taking a 9-8 lead before three consecutive Meagher kills put the Vikings on top.

Libby Sussner and Sophie Gillund spread the ball around effectively all night long, with Sussner tallying 25 set assists and Gillund adding another 24. On the finishing end of those sets, Meagher led the way with 18 kills while Jaylyn Coequyt and Sarah Gruenes added 15 and 14, respectively.

“I think for us to be successful, we really do have to move the ball around and get it into all of our hitters hands,” Buysse said. “As long as we’re working pin-to-pin, our setters did a really good job of moving the ball from side to side, making that happen and just kind of taking control of the offense.”

Gillund said that she felt her teammates were consistently doing a good job of getting to their spots to put her in a position to give them sets that they could put away.

Libero Abby Rolbiecki led the Vikings’ defensive back row with 16 digs in the match while Autum Anderson and Meagher each contributed another 12.

With their backs against the wall after dropping two of the first three sets, the Wolverines claimed 4 of the first 5 points in the fourth before Minneota started to turn things around.

A pair of Meagher kills with a MACCRAY attacking error sandwiched in between tied up the set at 7-all. An error on the Vikings gave the Wolverines their lead back, but the two teams oscillated between 1-point leads until a Meagher kill gave the Vikings an 11-9 edge.

“MACCRAY showed up. They came out really strong… and honestly, we came out slow and just weren’t executing,” Buysse said. “We weren’t getting good passes up, we weren’t finding the court, we weren’t setting up our offense and that showed. By the time we started doing some of those things, it was a little too late, we had dug ourselves a little bit too big of a hole, so we had to go into that second set and we knew we had to take the momentum with us… The girls showed up and they proved that we can do that.”

Leah Post tied up the set again at 12 points apiece before Jaylyn Coequyt came up with a kill and a block to put the Vikings back in command. Another pair of attacking errors against MACCRAY prompted the Wolverines to call their first timeout trailing 16-12, and Minneota continued to push toward victory when the Wolverines called their second after an Anderson service ace made the score 20-15.

After the timeout, Gruenes and Meagher combined for a block and Meagher added a kill, bringing the score to 22-16. Yet, the Wolverines weren’t ready to go home yet. A pair of Minneota attacking errors and a kill from Ruby Hultgren prompted a Minneota timeout, and Thein served up an ace to make it a 2-point game.

Still, an attacking error and a Jaylyn Coequyt kill set up match point at 24-20. The Wolverines briefly celebrated another point as Minneota prepared to go back to the service line, but the emotions quickly shifted after the officials ruled the point in Minneota’s favor due to a net violation to seal the win.

Facing a narrow 4-3 deficit early in the third set, Gruenes came up with a tying kill and MACCRAY committed an attacking error to give the Vikings the lead.

Gruenes and Meagher continued to build the lead with a kill each. After Swenson came up with a kill for the Wolverines, a combined block from Leah Coequyt and Meagher and a Sarah Gruenes ace prompted a MACCRAY timeout trailing 10-5.

Jaylyn Coequyt contributed a trio of kills and combined with Meagher for a block to help the Vikings bring their lead up to its apex of 11 points, 23-12, when MACCRAY started to cut into the deficit. A pair of attacking errors on the vikings and kills from Thein and Ruby Hultgren prompted a Minneota timeout, and the Vikings committed consecutive attacking errors after the break before calling their second timeout leading 23-19.

After the second break, Meagher ended MACCRAY’s stretch of 7 unanswered points with a kill. Thein answered with one of her own, but Leah Coequyt spiked away the 25-20 set victory.

Minneota improves to 27-6 with the win and now prepares for the Section 3A championship match against Westbrook-Walnut Grove at the R/A Facility in Marshall on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

“I think we all just need to stick together,” Gillund said of the team’s keys for the game. “It’s all about playing as one and not individuals.”