Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall’s Julia Fahl (12) reacts after a kill from her sister Avery (1) in the first set of a Section 2AAA volleyball tournament quarterfinal match against New Ulm Wednesday night at Marshall High School. The Tigers won in three sets, and next advance to the section semifinals against Mankato West on Friday in Marshall.

MARSHALL — Avery Fahl earned her 1,000th set assist and head Coach Dan Westby earned his 600th career win on Wednesday night when the top-ranked and top-seeded Marshall Tigers hosted No. 8 New Ulm for the first round of the Section 2AAA quarterfinals. The Tigers strung together scoring run after scoring run before running away with a 25-9, 25-9, 25-9 win to advance to the section semifinals against Mankato West.

“It’s a team goal, because I can’t do anything if I don’t get a good pass,” Fahl said of the milestone. “That’s my hitters too, attacking the ball, so it’s a really good team achievement.”

Marshall now has a pair of setters on its current roster with 1,000 career set assists. Fahl joins teammate Brooke Gillingham, who cracked the milestone as a sophomore as the team’s primary setter before the duo started to split setting duties their junior season last year.

“Me and Avery, we push each other a lot in practice. Not like, “push each other,” push each other, but we hold each other accountable,” Gillingham said. “If I’m having a couple of bad sets, Avery will let me know like, ‘Hey, I think push it out a little bit.’ Or if Avery sets a few balls that aren’t getting good swings… We have a good relationship where I can tell her to push it out a little bit. We have a good connection, which I think is really valuable because sometimes in female athletics, you don’t always have that between girls, but I think me and Avery have built that relationship over the last three years of playing with each other.”

Tuesday’s match marked the second consecutive season the two teams met in the section quarterfinals, after the Tigers earned a 25-11, 25-6, 25-9 win last season before eventually advancing to the state championship match.

Marshall faced an early 2-point deficit before scoring 6 unanswered points to take the lead. Julia Fahl, Brooke Gillingham and Reese Drake, along with consecutive hitting errors by the Eagles, quickly flipped the script for a 9-5 Marshall lead.

The Tigers committed a pair of errors to get New Ulm back on the board, but Marshall played clean volleyball from there and closed the set on a 16-2 run.

Runs were the story of the night for Marshall, who continued to find ways to string points together. The team chemistry the players built over the summer was a big part of that ability to find ways to build momentum, Gillingham said.

“Good team chemistry was built between last season and this season. Even since my sophomore year, me, Avery and Reese had the chemistry going,” Gillingham said. “Westby also kind of got us ready in the past week, telling us that we have the ability to put the hammer down on these teams, so why the heck not just put the hammer down and get it done?”

New Ulm called a timeout trailing 13-7, but the Tigers continued to surge ahead behind kills from Drake and Fahl and a Drake block. The Eagles responded with a kill, but a Drake block sparked Marshall on a 10-0 run to close the set.

Over the course of the run, Fahl got an ace block and combined for another with Ryks, while a Drake ace, a Julia Fahl kill and two more from Avery Fahl closed out the set for Marshall after New Ulm called a timeout trailing 20-8.

Avery Fahl finished the match leading the Tigers with 15 kills and a pair of ace blocks. She also tied Kezlyn Pinckney with a team-high eight digs and her eight set assists trailed only Gillingham’s eight.

Julia Fahl and Reese Drake also provided offensive support with nine kills each, while Drake also contributed six digs.

A Lauren Schmiessing block and a Calli Koop ace gave New Ulm each of the match’s first two points. Marshall answered kill, but the teams traded the next few points with kills from Brooklyn Lewis and Keira Sullivan giving New Ulm a 5-3 lead.

“I liked how they stayed aggressive on offense,” New Ulm head coach Christine Skoglund said of her team’s hot start. “I liked our ball control, serve receive and I also loved our aggressiveness when we were hitting the ball.”

Lewis, Koop, Lauren Schmiesing and Karly Meier tied for a team-high two kills for the Eagles while Izzy Longtin facilitated the offense with seven set assists. Sullivan also contributed at the net with a pair of ace blocks and a pair of block assists, while Schmeising contributed one ace block and two block assists.

From the start of the second set, Marshall was firing on all cylinders. The Eagles scored the set’s first point, but Avery Fahl hit for consecutive kills to spark a run of 12 unanswered Marshall points.

The Eagles called a timeout trailing 9-1 to try to slow Marshall’s momentum, but Drake aces on either side of the break helped Marshall increase its lead up to 12-1 before a pair of hitting errors on the Tigers ended the drought.

Drake finished the match 27 of 29 from the service line and tallied a total of five aces in the match. Pinckney and Halle DeVos also had perfect service on the night, going 12 of 12 and nine of nine, respectively.

New Ulm kept pace with Marshall until a defensive miscommunication by the Tigers cut the lead down to single digits, 18-9. From there, the Tigers scored 6 consecutive points to close out the set.

A pair of hitting errors against the Eagles kicked off the run, kills from Nora Holmgren and Brynn Webb kept it going and a Holmgren block sealed the 25-9 win.

New Ulm took an early lead in the final set behind a Marshall hitting and service error, bringing its advantage to 2-1. Yet, consecutive aces from Drake, and an emphatic kill from Avery Fahl led Marshall on a run of 6 unanswered points to take the lead.

After a service error ended Marshall’s run, a pair of kills from Julia and Avery Fahl got Marshall right back into a rhythm.

The Eagles called their first timeout of the set trailing 11-3, but back-to-back kills from Avery Fahl and a Pinckney ace brought the lead to 16-3 when the Tigers started working in their reserves. Another pair of kills from Drake and Bentley Krull then brought Marshall’s run up to 14 unanswered points before the New Ulm drought ended on an error.

The Eagles cut Marshall’s lead down to as few as 12 points, 20-8, when the Tigers returned to form. An ace from Krull and another from Gillingham helped the Tigers eventually clinch their spot in the section semifinals with a 25-9 victory.

Lewis led the New Ulm defense with seven digs while Schmiesing and Gracie Baker each added another six.

“My group always hustles and they always have a positive attitude,” Skoglund said. “Yes, sometimes our focus is up and down, but I felt like tonight, they did the best that they could against Marshall.”

Marshall improves to 28-2 and will host No. 4 Mankato West for the section semifinals on Friday at 7 p.m. The Tigers defeated the Scarlets in straight sets, 25-8, 25-9, 25-1,8 when the two teams met in the regular season on Sept. 15.

“We’ve just got to play our absolute best and we’ve got to be Marshall,” Fahl said when asked what the Tigers need to do to return to the section final.

New Ulm finishes its season at 8-19, doubling its win total from the previous season. The Eagles graduate a group of five seniors, including Lewis, Schmiesing, Longtin, Avarey Sellner and Isabel Krenz.

“We had five wonderful seniors this year and they were great role models, great mentors and great leaders for our team,” an emotional Skoglund said after the match.