Brian Bell | Marinette EagleHerald Escanaba’s Maddy Block bumps a dig during Tuesday’s match in Menominee.

MENOMINEE — After struggling in the first two games, the Menominee volleyball team made the final one exciting for the crowd on the Maroons annual Pink Out game for cancer awareness in a 3-0 loss to Escanaba on Tuesday night.

Prior to the game during team introductions, each player on the Menominee side dedicated the game to someone in their life who has been affected by cancer, and members of the JV team gifted their coach whose mother recently passed away from cancer flowers and a blanket. Escanaba coach Adam Lambert commented after the game about the tributes and all of the support shown by the teams and the crowd.

“It was really nice to see all the pink here and all of the support for cancer and how the varsity all sponsored somebody and then gifts the JV gave to their coach, that really touched me,” Lambert said.

Escanaba was the better team in the first two games, getting out to leads early on and holding on throughout in wins of 25-17 and 25-11 to take a 2-0 series lead.

In Game 1, the Eskymos got out to a 10-2 lead and held a 10-5 advantage early on in the second game thanks to strong defensive play from Jalin Olson and capitalizing on mistakes from the Maroons.

“We have an amazing defensive specialist in Jalin Olson. She’s probably the only one didn’t rotate out regularly because without her in the back row we struggle,” Lambert said. “(Menominee) got some good passes and sets, they were just hitting it out of bounds on some of them but they really picked it up in the third game.”

Menominee gained control of the serve with the score at 1-1 after a kill from Gracie Finger and Liz Nerat served for two points to go up 3-1. The Maroons lead got to 5-2 after an ace from Finger and Menominee was able to hold on to a small lead until Erin Barrette took over for the serve with score at 10-7.

Barrette used an ace, a kill from Finger and a long shot by the Eskymos to get the score to 13-7 — the largest of the game for Menominee — before a long shot by the Maroons gave the ball back to Esky at 13-8.

Escanaba started to come back slowly but surely until the Maroons lead was cut to 18-16, but a kill from Makenzie Wellner got it up to 19-16, gave Menominee the serve again and forced Esky into a timeout.

Out of the timeout, the Eskymos made some substitutions to get their core group back on the floor and after getting the serve back at 20-17, Bailey Barron served for five straight points to take the lead at 22-20.

Menominee got the ball back once more with the score at 22-21, but a serve into the net made it 23-21 and two straight points from Olson sealed the victory for Escanaba.

“We keep improving every time we step on the floor,” Menominee coach Sarah Betzinger said. “We did a nice job this weekend in Marquette, and it really helped us gel and trust each other. We started off slow in the first two games, that seems to a curse with us, but they’re playing better than the scores are showing. We’re moving a lot better, we know where we need to be and are starting to anticipate the ball much better. We just have little glitches that happen and that kills us.”

Aubrey Tordeur led Menominee with 21 assists and Nerat added 19 to lead the Maroons; Ashly Powell had three kills, seven blocks and four digs; Wellner had one kill and two blocks and Kylie Wickstrom had three kills and a dig.

Menominee’s freshman won one game 25-19 but fell in the other two 7-25 and 12-25. Piper Monroe had two kills; Jetta Bayerl had one kill and Haley Bouty had two aces.

Menominee hosts Gladstone on Monday in its next action. Escanaba hosts Stephenson next Tuesday.