Three years ago, this was still just a goal to pursue.<\/p>\n
After Rochester Mayo won its third straight girls tennis state championship Wednesday with a 5-2 victory over Minnetonka at the University of Minnesota\u2019s Baseline Tennis Center, the Spartans can officially call themselves a dynasty in the making.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot officially a dynasty,\u201d Spartans head coach Jeff Demaray said. \u201cWhen I think of a dynasty, I think of Edina, winning every year from 1997 to 2019, winning every single one but one. But yes, we\u2019ve had great success over the last three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reason? The Spartans pay the price. Every player on the team, with one exception, plays a heavy schedule of USTA tennis. When the high school season rolls around, they\u2019re battle-tested. High school tennis is a chance to alleviate a little pressure and spend a few months playing tennis with their school friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI play a lot of tennis to prepare for this,\u201d said junior Malea Diehn, the Spartans\u2019 No. 1 singles player. \u201cMy improvement slows down a little [during the high school season], but improvement fluctuates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior Ana Medina, who transferred to Mayo from Rochester Lourdes after eighth grade, said the benefits of playing high school tennis outweigh anything that might be gained against USTA competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe push each other to get better every day because the bar is so high,\u201d Medina said. \u201cWe have so many quality players, every day you\u2019re thinking \u2018How can I get better?\u2019 It\u2019s beneficial for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the players agree: High school tennis is a different kind of fun. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years ago, this was still just a goal to pursue. After Rochester Mayo won its third straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-245749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}