On the court, there is nothing gentile about this giant.

At 6-feet-4-inches, senior middle hitter Rabbecka Gonyo towers over teammates, who happen to be pretty tall themselves. She pounds the ball into the ground with force and relishes stuffing an opponent’s hit.

Strangely enough, it is not Gonyo’s height that makes her menacing on the court. It is her passion for the game and her burning desire to win. It’s her personality.

“She’s intense,” junior outside hitter Ashley Beyer said. “If she’s not playing well, she’ll get pissed. If we’re not passing well, she will yell at the passers and say, ‘Give me a pass so I can play.’”

The Ingleside, Ill. native has no qualms with that description of her.

“I am an intense person, I think that’s just me,” Gonyo said. “Being a senior, I know what is expected of everybody. I know that effort does not equal achievement.”

Named one of two team captains earlier this year, coach Bond Shymansky said she has played the role of bad cop in practice.

Just the fact that Shymansky named her a captain shows how much Gonyo has grown in her four years here, and her two years under Shymansky.

“It was a rough learning curve for both of us because she is tough sometimes, personally,” he said. “We were constantly teetering. It was a question mark in my mind as a coach whether or not she was going to trust me and do the things I was asking her to do or she was going to go her own way.”

Gonyo attributed many of the ups and downs to the inherent nervousness of going into an unknown situation.

“It’s just different going into a new coaching staff,” Gonyo said. “I didn’t know what he was going to say. I didn’t know what his offense was or what his theories were for volleyball.”

Once again, it was her personality that allowed her to persevere.

“I’ll give her credit, she just kept going and kept working,” Shymasnky said. “Now she just owns it. She’s more internally motivated than I could ever motivate her on my own.”

Gonyo has morphed into one of the most efficient players in the country. She is currently fifth in the nation and first in the Big East with a hitting percentage of .431, tallying 229 kills in 418 attempts.

“I would just say that nobody at Marquette has ever done that, so it’s a big feat,” Shymansky said. “It’s tough to do. There’s 3,500 student-athletes and you’re in the top five, that’s pretty good I don’t care what sport you’re in.”

The biggest transformation in her game has been adding speed to all that she does.

“When I first got here she was big and slow; she was just the ‘big girl,’” Shymansky said “I explained to her, sometimes in not very kind words, that she was going to have to learn how to be fast and that she would have to learn how to use speed instead of size.”

The results speak for themselves. Gonyo has become a lethal middle hitter, who is capable of putting the team on her back and leading them to victory.

Don’t let her gentile features fool you though, when it comes game time, it’s win at all costs.