Photo by Jake McNeill: The Marshall volleyball team's bench celebrates a point during the third set of a Class AAA quarterfinal match against Big Lake on Wednesday at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul. The Tigers swept Big Lake to claim their fifth consecutive state quarterfinal victory. Marshall now advances to the state semifinals on Friday.

ST. PAUL — Reese Drake and Avery Fahl each logged double-doubles in the Marshall volleyball team’s Class AAA quarterfinal match against Big Lake on Wednesday at Grand Casino Arena to lead the Tigers back to the state semifinals. The Tigers jumped out to an early lead in the first set and never looked back, coasting to a 25-13, 25-12, 25-12 win for its fifth consecutive state quarterfinal victory.

“It’s good to get that first one under your belt at the state tournament, sometimes those matches can tend to be a little bit ugly,” Marshall head coach Dan Westby said. “Certainly we’ve got some things we need to clean up prior to Friday’s match, but overall it was a pretty good effort by our kids,”

Drake’s 12 kills were a team-high and her 10 digs trailed only libero Laurel Ryks. Fahl, meanwhile, contributed 10 kills on a team-leading .529 hitting percentage and her 16 set assists trailed only Brooke Gillingham’s 22.

Gillingham served the opening point for Marshall and led the Tigers on an 8-0 service run in the first set of the match.

Big Lake’s defense prolonged the match’s first pair of points, with Reese Drake ending both rallies with a kill. Gillingham also served an ace and Fahl came up with a kill over the course of the run before Taylor Kipka broke it up with a kill for the Hornets.

“We feel like we always need to win the serve-pass game. In other words, we need to serve better than they pass and we need to pass better than they serve,” Westby said of his team’s early success, adding that it has been a point of emphasis all season long for his group and that winning the serve-pass game is something they only expect to get harder as they face stronger opponents later in the tournament.”

A string of attacking errors by the Tigers allowed Big Lake to trim Marshall’s edge to 4 points, 13-9, before Marshall pulled away with another 5-point service run from Gillingham, with Fahl stepping up for a pair of kills and a block.

The Hornets never recovered and Marshall’s lead ballooned into double digits before claiming a 25-13 win.

The Tigers are now two wins away from adding to their extensive trophy case of state championships. Drake, Fahl and Gillingham were all starters for the team’s most recent title in 2023, but they’re still hungry for more.

“It definitely feels different as our last go-around, but we’re just taking in every moment and not taking any of these moments with our teammates for granted,” Drake said.

Wednesday’s match was a tale of two very different journeys. Marshall has a storied volleyball history, with 34 state tournament appearances and a state-leading nine state championships. Big Lake, meanwhile, entered the tournament with a 13-17 record before coming up with a pair of upsets in its section tournament to reach the Class AAA quarterfinals for the first time in program history.

“I feel like there were a lot of nerves going into it,” Big Lake libero Brooke Mosher said. “Just all around, we don’t know what it’s going to be like… But I feel like we also went in with confidence, just soaking in the moment.”

Big Lake started the year dropping eight of its first 10 matches, skewing its record early on. While they never got above .500, the Hornets won in the section tournament when it mattered most to get to this point for the first time ever.

“There were glimpses of the team that pulled it together in sections. We had a lot of fight throughout the season, going to five sets, and I felt like that built perserverance going into it,” Mosher said.

Westby noted that, while the Hornets had their regular-season struggles, they were playing their best volleyball of the year at tournament time. As such, he told the Tigers that they had to come ready from the first serve.

As a team, Marshall put together a .337 hitting percentage in the match while holding Big Lake to a .011 mark. Nora Holmgren’s play up front was a big part of that, as the freshman logged an ace block and five block assists in her state tournament debut. Halle DeVos and Avery Fahl each also chipped in with three block assists each.

Marshall’s first-set momentum carried into the second set as they scored 6 of the first 7 points, including a pair of combined blocks from Fahl and Laurel Ryks.

Once again, Big Lake whittled Marshall’s edge down to 3 points, 9-6. Once again, the Tigers responded aggressively.

Back-to-back kills from Drake and another from Avery Fahl sparked the run, and a series of Big Lake attacking errors helped bolster Marshall’s lead until a Julia Fahl kill brought the difference to double digits. The Hornets never recovered, with a Laurel Ryks kill sending the Hornets down by a score of 25-12.

Julia Fahl logged five of her 11 kills in the second set, finishing the night with a .381 hitting percentage.

Pinckney picked up a service ace and Avery and Julia Fahl each recorded kills to help Marshall on a 4-0 run to get some breathing room early in the final set, bringing the score to 6-2.

Holmgren continued to impact the game at the net as she had a pair of block assists with DeVos and a kill of her own in a span of 5 points to build the Tigers’ lead up to 11-6.

Big Lake was unable to spark any sort of momentum in the frame, and Avery Fahl led a 6-0 run from the service line, aided by a trio of Big Lake attacking errors, to claim the 25-12 clinching win.

Kipka and Madison Reed led the Hornets offensively with seven kills each while Ashley Fitzgibbons dished out 20 set assists. Mosher and Fitzgibbons also led the team defensively with seven kills each. Big Lake logged one block on the day compared to nine for Marshall.

Wide-open window to the title

Marshall and Delano occupied the top two spots in the Minnesota coaches poll all season long, with Delano being the lone school preventing the Tigers from reaching the status of unanimous No. 1. Delano was upset by eventual-No. 2 seed Benilde-St. Margaret’s in the section tournament, leaving Marshall with one less team to worry about. Still, Marshall isn’t taking anything for granted in a loaded tournament field.

“We’d be lying if we said we didn’t have our eye on Delano all season. They’re a great team, certainly deserve to be here in the field, but those things happen,” Westby said. “I think this triple-A field is the best field in the tournament. In other words, I think there are four or five different teams that could win this thing. So it’s going to be tough. This match going on right now between Cretin-Derham Hall and Sauk Rapids-Rice is going to be a dog fight, and we’re going to play that winner on Friday morning at nine o’clock.”

Fast times at Marshall High

In another moment of déjà vu from last year, the Marshall volleyball team once again has a day off between its state quarterfinal and semifinal matches. Like last year, Marshall’s football team will be playing its quarterfinal game on that day, which the volleyball team will be travelling to attend.

“I wrestle with [whether the kids should go to the football game] as acoach, but in the end, number one, they’re high school kids,” Westby said. “And secondly, it’s just another opportunity to support another team from our school, so they’re going to go to the game. There are going to be some stipulations, but they’re going to go. In the end, I just think that’s the right thing to do.”

Coming up next

Marshall improves to 31-2 on the season with the win and next takes on No. 5 Cretin-Derham Hall on Friday at 9 a.m. at Court 1 of Grand Casino Arena. The Raiders are now 23-4 on the season after taking down Sauk-Rapids Rice in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

A handful of players on both teams are familiar with each other from last winter, as the Marshall and Cretin-Derham Hall girls basketball teams faced off in the state semifinals. The higher seed on both occasions, Marshall will look to replicate the result after defeating Cretin-Derham Hall 57-48.