For setter Marie Zidek, it’s all about control.

Who moves where, who gets the set, who gets the stats – Zidek thrives on controlling these aspects of volleyball. It’s control that gives her self-confidence on and off the court. For Zidek, life is just time to bust her butt for others. And she doesn’t rest until she has given her all.

“She is the hardest worker I have ever known in my life,” teammate Corrine Walsh said. “It doesn’t matter what it is, she just always works hard at it.”

It’s her work ethic to which Zidek attributes her playing abilities, as she feels that she’s not even that good at volleyball. The level she plays at on the court has shown through on the court as she is 11th in digs (3.43 per game) and seventh in assists (11.53 per game) in the MAC. Her assists average has helped senior Tera Lobdell post the second most kills per game in the MAC (5.87).

But her play should be of no surprise with her background. The Evanston native was brought up with a volleyball in one hand and competitiveness, derived from her parents, instilled in her head. From the time that Zidek was a toddler, she has been around the game with her mom, a volleyball coach.

“I grew up hanging around my mom’s volleyball practices and trying to help out,” Zidek said. “I was just a gym rat and I loved being around the girls. I would pick up the balls and play around because I just loved being around the sport.”

But when the “gym rat” wasn’t actually in the gym, the next best place to find her was outside. Scraping her knees on this or bruising that was almost a hobby to Zidek when she played in the streets with the neighborhood kids.

But Zidek ditched the street ball games and got to put all those gym rat lessons to work when she joined Walsh on the club team Windy City in sixth grade. And it was the club team, along with Walsh, that helped Zidek find her way to NIU.

“[Former NIU coach] Todd Kress was actively recruiting Corrine [Walsh] at the time, and he happened to see me playing one of the times he came to watch Corrine,” Zidek said. “The weird thing is, he lost Corrine to the University of South Florida, but he got me instead.”

And three years later, the accidental recruit is trying to control only one last thing before her time here is done: getting her teammates a MAC championship.