By THOMAS ST. MYER
tstmyer@muncie.gannett.com
MUNCIE — Some Central students soaked up the sun on the Florida beaches over spring break last March. They returned to school with bronzed skin and undoubtedly told embellished stories about their trip.
Marquita Marshall returned bruised and battered from an altercation with her abusive ex-boyfriend. She bit her lip and dodged questions about her black eye, refusing to share her story with any of her classmates.
“I shut everybody off,” Marquita says.
The baby-faced Marquita sits on the stairs in the Muncie Fieldhouse after volleyball practice Tuesday, seven months removed from her nightmarish spring break. The Central junior stares at the Fieldhouse floor as she recalls how her then 19-year-old ex-boyfriend, Tavon Cannady, pushed her out of his car onto her driveway after a heated argument. Marquita says Cannady then left the car running in reverse as he exited to check on her. The car rolled back and the opened passenger door smacked into her before crashing into a utility pole.
Her mother, Lynn Marshall, stands by her, cringing at the recollection of what unfolded.
She remembers how sick to her stomach she felt when she arrived home from work and found her daughter with a black eye and bloodied face.
“I was angry at myself for not being more aware,” Lynn says. “Of course, with me working a lot, (Marquita) ended up staying at home by herself a lot and things were happening that I didn’t know about. I was really disappointed in myself that I wasn’t there to protect her and help her through that situation, because no girl should have to deal with that.
“I had heard from parents and friends, because apparently he (hit her) in the parking lot here one day before practice (last year), so some of the players and parents were really concerned about our situation. When I asked her about it, of course, she put spins on it and it wasn’t anything as they had made it out to be.”
Lynn manages at Panera Bread where she devotes 65 to 70 hours a week to bring home enough money to pay for her two youngest daughters, Marquita and 11-year-old Nikki, to play for the Munciana Volleyball Club. The club expenses, topping $1,000 per player, take their toll on a single parent without any financial child support. Marquita’s parents divorced seven years ago and her father lives in Indianapolis.
“She puts my volleyball before anything, like bills,” Marquita says of her mother. “She struggles for it, but she does it. She’d do anything for me. It means a lot to me. It’s the greatest thing. Last year, I wasn’t going to play volleyball so my youngest sister could. But (my mom) said she could do it, so I played and she’s still doing it. My dad doesn’t pay her anything.”
Lynn says a stack full of letters from NCAA Division I college volleyball coaches motivates her to pull through those grueling shifts.
Change in attitude
Marquita stands a wiry 5-foot-8, a relatively short height for a Division I player, but she possesses the athleticism to sky in the air and put a ball down or hold a block against towering hitters.
For the Central junior, a free-ride scholarship awaits, assuming she stays on track in the classroom and steers clear of any serious injuries. She lists Ball State, Bowling Green and Indiana as her top three choices at the moment.
“She’s definitely a Division I player,” Central coach Wes Lyon says, “and I think she’s still got a lot of room to improve.”
Lyon credits Marquita for putting in the extra practice time to hone her skills, but she emerged into a Division I type-player over the past year primarily due to her maturation.
“Her attitude has improved so much,” Central senior right-side hitter Abbie Allardt says.
Whenever adversity struck in the past, Marquita dropped her shoulders, clenched her fists and stared across the net with a glassy-eyed expression.

She provided the Bearcats a physical presence on the court, but mentally she checked out.
Now, Marquita handles adversity by breathing deeply, letting out a grunt and then saying a few motivational words before the next point.
“She’s had some goals in her life about going to college and we’ve kind of had to help shape how you do that, how you get there,” Lyon says. “Sometimes you can’t act the way you want to act. There’s a certain way you have to handle yourself.”
How Marquita acted in the classroom as a freshman explains why she brought home report cards littered with letters other than A and B.
“Before, I wasn’t really doing the work,” she says. “I would just goof off in class.”
Learning from her mistakes
Marquita’s focus really drifted towards the end of her freshman year as her relationship with Cannady deteriorated.
“He was kind of abusive, verbally and physically,” she says. “He’d slap or grab me and shake me. It didn’t happen often at the beginning. It like never happened, but toward the end when we started breaking up, falling apart, it started happening more.”
Marquita broke up with Cannady in the summer of 2008, but stayed in touch with him until he pushed her out of his car last spring break.
Cannady fled the scene, though the police tracked him down after speaking to the Marshalls. The police discovered marijuana and pills during a search of his apartment and arrested him for possession of marijuana and possession of a controlled substance, both felonies, and misdemeanor counts of leaving the scene of an accident and domestic battery.
For Marquita, her relationship with Cannady stands out as the worst in a series of freshman mistakes.
“I’m glad I’m not like that anymore,” she says. “I’m glad I’ve matured and grown up and became smarter about things.”
The summer following her freshman year set her maturation in motion. She took home AAU All-American club volleyball honors and letters soon poured in from college coaches. The letters served as notice that a free education loomed if she buckled down in the classroom.
Marquita dropped a few of the negative influences from her inner-circle as a sophomore and focused in on academics. She fit in tutoring sessions around athletics and baby-sitting Nikki. The result? Her grade-point average now stands at 3.2 on a 4.0 scale.
Yes, Marquita took a few detours and paid the price mentally and physically for her mistakes, but Lynn recognizes that ultimately her wandering off the beaten path sped up her maturation process.
Mom beams with pride as her daughter speaks about her academic standing. Another shift at Panera Bread awaits, but Lynn feels re-energized as if she just downed an espresso shot. The end is in sight, and a bright future awaits her daughter.
“Knowing that it was one thing that she showed interest in, and knowing her dedication and love for it, and it was keeping her out of trouble and focused, I decided the positives outweighed the negatives,” Lynn says of club volleyball. “And here six years later, as she said, we’ve sacrificed lots and lots, but in the end she’s going to have a full-ride scholarship.”