By ELIOT SILL

Staff writer

Volleyball, more so than other sports, is about energy. The more the players are pumping each other up, the higher the vertical can get, the harder the spikes can become.

It can be hard to sustain a high energy level for 10 hours, as Marion found out Saturday.

Marion High School’s annual Spikefest began at 9 a.m., with a Marion win over Lyons in three sets. The Lions came into the tournament with a deceptive 1-9 record, which may have caught the Warriors off guard. After dropping the first set, Marion came back to win.

Marion then bested Centre and Berean in pool play to advance and play Sedgwick.

Sedgwick presented Marion with a taller front line that at times punished Marion above the net. The Warriors battled back though, thanks to the play of junior setter Kirsten Hansen and her freshman sister Kourtney. The sisters facilitated the Marion attack and kept Sedgwick off balance with quick sets and dumps to vacant spots.

Down 18-19 in the deciding third set, head coach Brady Hudson called a timeout. He calmed his team down.

Senior Julia Hall recalled his message: “We know we can do this, we’ve got this, we’ve done this before.”

And they did it again.

After a Sedgwick service error tied the score at 19, Marion ran off six straight points to win the game 25-19.

“Awesome,” senior Sam Davies said of that rally. “It felt really good.”

A jubilant Marion team celebrated the victory — briefly. Ten minutes later, the team was back on the court, playing the Defenders, a homeschool team from Wichita.

Wichita brought a similar attack to Marion with taller players who could get good angles on their kill attempts.

Marion couldn’t keep up the energy level needed, and lost in two sets, 22-25, 14-25, as the clock approached 7 p.m.

“We could have hung with them more than we did, but it was kind of a long day,” Davies said. “I’m still proud of how we played.”

Hudson was pleased with how Marion handled the taller teams it faced. Marion made up for its lack of size with smart volleyball, and with high energy.

“We played really hard and fought in every game,” senior Julia Hall said. “We never gave up. We just worked our butts off all the time.”