CADILLAC — The Marquette Senior High School volleyball team advanced out of pool play and made it to the Gold Bracket of the Cadillac Invitational held downstate on Saturday.

MSHS finished second in its pool after winning two of three matches, totaling four wins in six games, and went on to advance to the Gold Bracket quarterfinals before bowing out.

Marquette, now 12-8-1 overall, defeated Midland Dow 25-15, 25-17 and LeRoy Pine River 25-19, 25-20, while losing to the host Vikings 25-19, 25-20 in pool play.

In the Gold Bracket, MSHS fell in the quarterfinals to Grand Rapids Forest Hills Eastern 25-15, 25-14.

“Our record may not reflect it, but we made a strong showing (Saturday) and I’m proud of our team’s consistent play,” Marquette coach Ann Crandell-Williams said in an email reporting the results. “This tournament had a lot of good competition, and our athletes showed improvement in many aspects of their game.

“(Our) defense was strong as usual, serving was consistent, and (our) offensive game showed definite improvement. We’ve been working on consistently getting solid swings and putting tougher balls across the net, and they did that well.

“We are going into our third week of a pretty grueling schedule, but the strength of that is they can just settle in and run their own game.”

Ava Maki led MSHS’ attack with 25 kills, while Jessica Gooch added 13 kills with a .357 attack percentage. In addition, Brianna Jarvis and Olivia Mackie had eight kills apiece while Jocelyn Mead had seven and Roegen Hruska five. Seven Marquette players had positive attack percentages, meaning they had more kills than attack errors over the eight sets played.

Gooch and Mead led the way with four blocks apiece, while Hruska had two.

Teammate Jaylee Dellies led the team with six service aces, while Alyson McCarthy had four and Cece Fuller three.

McCarthy and Hruska each had 21 assists, while Maki made 21 digs, Dellies 20 and Hruska 17.

MSHS is back in action at 7 p.m. today in Houghton, then comes home to host Escanaba at 7 p.m. Thursday. MSHS also hosts the Marquette Invitational at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, which includes area schools Westwood, Ishpeming and Manistique.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.