MINNEAPOLIS\u2014Junior team tennis is making a comeback in Northeastern Minnesota and Rock Ridge has found itself at the forefront of things once more.<\/p>\n
Fielding a 14U intermediate and 18U advanced team, both teams recently advanced to their respective section tournaments, featuring the top teams from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota and South Dakota.<\/p>\n
At the 14U section tournament, the Wolverines went undefeated across their entire slate of matches, locking up the team championship while the 18U team made it all the way to the semifinals before being knocked out of their tournament. That ultimately gave them a third place finish.<\/p>\n
In starting up a junior team tennis program for Rock Ridge, coach and co-organizer Payton Marks said the inspiration came from coach Dave Gunderson, who brought multiple junior tennis teams to the national championships nearly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to get that started again,\u201d Marks said. \u201cDave Gunderson, he\u2019s done so much for these kids and he\u2019s really the one who made us want to start team tennis again. He\u2019s had so much success in running programs like this in the past so his influence in starting that up again was huge.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to keep this going again into next year and there\u2019s a lot of coaches around here that want to play a part in helping these kids out as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming from a well regarded high school program like Rock Ridge, Marks said bringing back junior team tennis in the summer is just one way for players\u2014current and future\u2014to hone their skills in the offseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really want to focus on that work outside of the high school season. I realized after my senior year in high school that working together in the summer and the winter was really the key to making our team better going forward. Building a program like this, the 14U kids are as young as seventh grade so we want them to do this as a way to challenge themselves and get better. Going forward, as they play on the varsity team, they\u2019ll see that their hard work paid off and they\u2019ll be more motivated to push themselves even further.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both the 14U and 18U teams are composed of eight players (four boys and four girls) and tournament matches consist of points contested at singles, doubles and mixed doubles. The team played matches earlier in the summer against local competition from Hibbing, Grand Rapids and Duluth and their success in those matches granted them a spot in the sectional tournament in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
After the 14U team went 3-0 in pool play to start their sectional run, Marks had a good feeling that his side could compete with the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were the No. 2 seed after that first day but I thought our team definitely had the potential to win the whole thing. We expected to do well but I wanted to remind the kids to just have fun and not overthink things.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we got to the finals, that\u2019s when we really saw the level of the competition shift. It ended up coming down to our mixed doubles match to decide the whole thing and it was very exciting for all of them to get that win as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the 18U side, the Wolverines went 2-1 in pool play and won their subsequent quarterfinal match before falling in the semifinals to finish third overall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a couple matches that were really close but just didn\u2019t go our way,\u201d Marks said. \u201cI think things could have gone either way but it was hard for us to even know which lineup to use because we have so many good singles and doubles players. We weren\u2019t short on anything talent wise, I think our opponents just played really great matches.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 18U team even featured some recently graduated Rock Ridge tennis players with Marks saying it was great to see them play for the Wolverines one more time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a cool last thing for them to do with the team. Some of the boys probably didn\u2019t enjoy ending their season with a loss at state so getting to come back and do this I hope was pretty cool for them. Any time you get another opportunity to play together, it\u2019s almost like you have to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 14U division currently doesn\u2019t hold a national-level competition past the section level, but Marks hopes the success from the current group carries over into the next few years and a potential nationals berth once they\u2019re a part of the 18U team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to end on a high note with that team and I can totally see them playing 18U in a few years and making it to nationals. All these kids will be back next year and I think they\u2019ve been a great showcase of what Northern Minnesota has to offer for tennis. It\u2019s been a great summer with them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS\u2014Junior team tennis is making a comeback in Northeastern Minnesota and Rock Ridge has found itself at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,2598,82,593,1457],"class_list":["post-840299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-minnesota","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tournament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}