No one said it would be easy. Marquette battled for a five set victory over Texas State in their first match of the Marquette Invitational and followed that with a 3-1 win over Butler to improve their record to 4-1.

The Golden Eagles were able to rally from a one set deficit to defeat the 2008 Southland Conference Champions Texas State behind strong performances from a pair of sophomores.

Sophomore Ashley Beyer led the team with 17 kills while fellow sophomore Ciara Jones followed with 15 of her own. Beyer also tied with Kelsey Warner for team lead in digs with 15.

“Very up and down game for us, but we’re still a young team trying to work through it,” coach Bond Shymansky said.

Texas Southern jumped out to an early 8-3 lead in the first set capitalizing on a Marquette team playing deep in the court. Down 22-16, a block by Rabbecka Gonyo injected some life into Marquette for a rally to within 24-23. However, a tip kill ended the comeback and put Marquette in a 1-0 hole.

After losing the opening set, Shymansky shook up his lineup by replacing junior Leslie Bielski with the hard hitting sophomore Jones.
“I really give big props to Jones for coming in off the bench and really being better than a spark plug. She was like the whole engine for us,” Shymansky said.

“I just stay consistent in practice and try to keep working hard,” Jones said. “I just keep praying and hoping and keep working hard in practice.”

The “engine” helped Marquette take a 16-11 lead in the second set. That lead would disappear, however, and the teams would be tied at 20. Back to back errors by Texas State would give the Eagles a slim margin that they wouldn’t relinquish winning 25-23.

After splitting the third and fourth sets, strong defense and some timely play by the veteran Gonyo helped Marquette win the deciding set 15-10.
Junior Nikki Klingsporn dished out a career high 50 assists, later to be broken, along with 13 digs in recording her third double double of the season.

The second match of the day proved to be a much more fluid game. Both teams came out hitting and both hit over .300 but Marquette was too much for the Butler Bulldogs.

“Today was a good day. We went 2-0 and that’s how you want to start your home tournament,” Shymansky said.

Gonyo and Beyer led the way in kills with 17 and 16 kills respectively, while Klingsporn had another tremendous day setting her career mark for assists in a game, this time at 58.

“The first match Nikki and I weren’t connecting very well, so I just went out there thinking that I had to keep working and Nikki and I will connect sometime and we obviously did the second match,” Gonyo said.

Also contributing for the Golden Eagles were Jones with 14 kills and Holly Mertens with 13 showing the depth and quality of the club.

“Anybody on our team is capable of being good. We have players on the bench who can come out and be good for us,” Shymansky said.

Marquette didn’t need to dig too deep in its bench for this one. After a relatively simple first set, 25-21, Butler pushed it to the limits. Tied at 24, the two teams traded blows until an errant hit into the net by Butler gave Marquette the second set 28-26.

Down to match point in the third set, Butler capitalized on a few errors by Marquette and pulled the set out 26-24. The Golden Eagles would not take part in the comeback story, however. They used the timely hitting of right side hitter Mertens to overwhelm the Bulldogs in the fourth set 25-20.