Cloquet girls tennis winds up season

Talk about it

The girls tennis season has ended with the section tournament events held in both team and individual play this week.

The team fell 6-1 to Hermantown on Monday in the first round of the section playoffs. The first doubles team of Savannah Hanson and Reilly Kedrowski earned Cloquet’s team point. The pairing also earned All-Conference status as a result of their solid play this season.

On Tuesday, team members were involved in individual section tournament play at Duluth’s Arrowhead Tennis Center. In the first round, All-Conference singles player Kelsey Collier defeated Courtney Prahl of Grand Rapids 6-2, 6-1 before falling in the second round to Annie Mahoney of Duluth East.

Alicen Johnson, who won the ninth seed in section singles, lost in her first match to Jean Dougherty of Hermantown.

The doubles team of Hanson and Kedrowski was broken up for the section tournament. Hanson paired with Savanna Ellena to oust Val Youngren and Sarah Cooke of Grand Rapids in the first round of doubles play in straight sets, but the duo lost to Michaela Cleveland and Linsey Stocco of the Thunderhawks in the second round.

Meanwhile, Kedrowski paired with Michaela Houser but fell to another Grand Rapids team of Marisa Teems and Steph Mackey in the first round.

“It went pretty much how we thought it would,” coach Steve Rickstrom said. “I think the girls did pretty well. We were in a rebuilding year after graduating a bunch of players, but these kids stepped up and held their own. We had a lot of younger kids who didn’t get the chance to play last year and they did this season.”

Rickstrom was happy with the consistency a number of team members gained this year.

“We were more aggressive and some were more consistent than others,” he said. “Overall I’d say we did a little better than we had hoped and better than we expected.”

Rickstrom was also pleased with the number of players who qualified for the section individual meet.

“It’s an honor to be picked,” he said. “If you make it, you’re one of the best 14 singles players or doubles teams basically north of Minneapolis because of the size of our region. To go to that tournament and win as some of our girls did is good. We had the only ninth-grader in the individual tournament and one of the very few sophomores. These kids will be back next year and hopefully winning more.”

Tags: sports, tennis, cloquet