MANKATO — They started fast and finished with authority.
Mankato West volleyball saw senior Lydia Banse deliver the final blows in a 25-12, 25-16, 25-22 home win over Rochester John Marshall Tuesday.
“She embraces the back row when she’s back there,” Scarlets coach Stacy Jackson said of the senior. “She’s very comfortable, and she does pretty well back there.”
With a 2-0 match lead in hand the Scarlets found themselves in an all out war in the third frame. No matter what West attempted to do, it couldn’t bury the Rockets or leave them completely on the ground.
With 11 ties and eight lead changes on the books everything was dead even at 22-22 off a kill from West junior Maleah Grunst.
Then Banse stepped to the service line. She delivered a serve the Rockets could not return cleanly, giving West a 23-22 lead as John Marshall called timeout.
The Rockets’ rebuttal on the ensuing serve appeared to generate an opportunity, but a player in the front row stepped over the middle line. Point Scarlets.
Banse dropped back to serve again, this time with set point and match point on the line. Her serve was returned back by John Marshall, but from the back row Banse delivered her sixth, final and most impactful kill of the night, clinching the sweep over the Rockets.
“Everybody stepped up,” Jackson said. “This team, especially this year, has so many key players. It’s not like we just have a few. We have a lot. So that’s really fun to watch as a coach.”
Outside of the third set Tuesday’s match proved to be all West early and often.
In set one it was setter Courtney O’Connor opening the match on a seven-point service run with a trio of aces. West never trailed in the opening frame, totalling six of its nine aces en route to a 25-12 wallop.
John Marshall led for one point in the second stanza — a 1-0 lead that transformed into an 8-2 Scarlets advantage. The Rockets clawed within two points on two occasions, but a 10-2 run by the Scarlets put the frame out of reach at 19-9.
“We just get in a role and people are comfortable, and then we kind of pump each other up,” Jackson said. “Sometimes I think we get too comfortable, and that’s kind of what happened. They capitalized on that with a couple of short balls that we missed. (John Marshall) got energized by that, and that’s tough to rally back from. But we were able to dig deep and figure it out.”
Banse also had three digs and two blocks. O’Connor racked up 26 assists, four aces and four digs. Freshman Alex Barten accumulated a team-best 11 kills with five digs, two blocks and a helper. Senior Brianna Becker paced West with 16 digs. Grunst finished the evening with 10 kills, 12 digs and a pair of aces. Sophomore Anika Sathoff had seven digs and two aces.
West hits the road to face Albert Lea at 7:15 p.m. Thursday.