The Marshalltown volleyball team had to come up with a comeback win over Cedar Rapids Jefferson on Tuesday night to advance to the Class 5A Region 6 final.

“Their record is very deceiving because their losses are to all ranked opponents, very highly ranked opponents,” head coach Chris Brees said. “I went over and scouted them and we knew they had cannons. I think even though we tried to prepare our team for that we came out shellshocked. They served very aggressive and we couldn’t respond. We told [our players] to just weather that first game, that’s the best they are going to get from that team and then play our game. I think we responded very well.”

The Bobcats dropped the first set to the Jayhawks (13-18) after trailing by as many as 10 points to start the playoff match. However, Marshalltown won 19-25, 27-25, 25-23, 25-19.

“I think we were just a little nervous at the start,” MHS senior setter Madi Finch said. “It’s a big game and it was our seniors’ last home game, but we were just nervous that we wanted to do well. It just didn’t happen but we fought back.”

According to Finch, after the first set, the Bobcat seniors’ goal was to inspire their younger teammates to keep the season alive.

“[Us] seniors said that we wanted it to be a good last home game,” Finch said. “We want to end it with a win and we want to keep playing because we don’t want our season to be over. We just wanted to inspire the younger kids to play for us like it was their last season too.”

The two teams squared off in a back-and-forth, momentum-swinging second set. Marshalltown trailed for most of the way after falling behind 5-0 early on. Down 23-18, the Bobcats put together a 7-1 run that helped them pick up the pivotal win.

The key adjustment the Bobcats had to make was shifting their offense based on how well Cedar Rapids Jefferson had scouted Marshalltown.

“[The difference] was about our hitters finishing and serving more aggressive,” Brees said. We were serving really serving easy serves to them and they were in system very well. We said ‘We don’t care if you miss serves in, we missed some, but we want you to go back and serve a hard serve to get them out [of system and] where their No. 15 [Cassidy Boche] couldn’t hit the ball. She was out of system, she was hitting aggressive still, but she wasn’t right on the net every time. We did that and then we talked about our hitters not running slow and moving fast going up the middle because we were digging a ton of balls.”

The Bobcats totaled 77 digs on the night with Erica Johnson having a team-leading 17, Finch posting 15 and Brittany Sichra having 14 digs.

Marshalltown again trailed early to start the third set with the Jayhawks leading 4-1. The Bobcats tied the match at 8-8 which from there the two teams had five ties and two lead changes until Marshalltown came up with a 5-1 run to take a 22-19. The Jayhawks surged late to tie the game at 23-23 but the Bobcats held on for the win.

MHS maintained momentum in the final set until the score was tied at 11-11, in which the Bobcats broke away with a 7-1 run that helped seal the match.

“We just had to notice where the other team was,” Finch, who had 38 assists, said. “They changed what they were doing because they had scouted us. They knew where we hit, they knew Erica [Johnson] was our main person we go-to and Autumn [Finch] is our other main person we go-to so we just had to switch it up on offense to get it to different people so that they weren’t ready and then we could go back to our main priority gunners

As a result, Johnson finished 17 kills, Gabby Himes had 10 kills, Hayden Oetker had seven kills and Autumn Finch had six kills.

Brees gave much credit to Madi Finch for not only helping the offense make its adjustments but for her leadership.

“She ran a really good offense,” Brees said. “In a point that we lost, she dove almost middle back and almost out of the gym, for the ball against the bleachers and still got a hand on it. You could tell that was a senior wanting to not [play her] last match. I was really proud of how she distributed the ball. She held everybody really accountable tonight. She was a leader. She had some key blocks and had some short serves that really became key tonight.”

The Bobcats will now have to go on the road to face top-ranked Cedar Falls (40-1) on Monday at 7 p.m.

“Every year we go through Cedar Falls,” Brees said. “The thing is we have nothing to lose [and] they have everything to lose. We are just going to train to go in and try and dig a lot of balls.”