LA CROSSE — Aquinas High School girls tennis coach Evan Huemoeller wanted his team to face an overwhelming challenge early this season.
The Blugolds, who placed second at the WIAA Division 2 team state tournament last fall, were preparing for a jump to Division 1, and Huemoeller wanted to emphasize to his players what the meant.
“We didn’t have a Verona or a (Green Bay) Notre Dame, someone who could really stomp us,” Huemoeller said. “I wanted us to play a team where I could say, ‘This is a team in contention for a state title, and this is the work we need to put in to get there.'”
Instead, the Blugolds won the first 17 dual meets of their season and are 24-1 as they prepare to begin the postseason by hosting a subsectional at the Green Island Tennis Center on Monday.
But even without the kind of elite opponent Huemoeller coveted, the Blugolds had chances to prove they should feel right at home in the Division 1 world. They did exactly that with a 4-3 victory over Kimberly, a Fox Valley Association team that won five of its final six duals in a successful season, and a 4-3 win over Madison West, which won the Big Eight Conference.
“I thought we’d be in trouble, but not that competing with teams in the upper echelon of the state was out of reach,” Huemoeller said. “The thought was that we’re not a Division 1 team because we lost the second-best player in Division 2 (senior Kate Fortney was state runner-up last year) and a doubles team that qualified for state that wasn’t coming back.
“As I’ve watched them, there’s a definite opportunity to go back to state. It took me a little time to realize that, and I had to look at it through a different lens.”
A few things Huemoeller knew he had was senior Tenzin Nelson, who was primed to make her first foray into No. 1 singles, and senior Kaitlyn McGovern, who won 30 matches and was a sectional qualifier at No. 3 singles last season. He also had junior Eva Willenbring — half of that state-qualifying doubles team last fall — ready to enter the singles lineup.
As they won matches and adjusted to new roles, Huemoeller waited for his moment to make his point and emphasize his thoughts on what the change in division meant. That came after a 4-3 win over DeForest.
“They were probably a little overconfident and just squeaked it out,” he said. “DeForest is a pretty solid tennis team, and I probably didn’t use our strongest lineup, but they gave us a battle.
“I said to them, ‘OK, this is what big matches should feel like. You have to be able to win the nail-biters and get through the grind.”
Huemoeller’s team, which suffered its only loss in a 4-3 defeat at the hands of Hudson, was also pushed by Onalaska at the end of the season. The Blugolds won 5-2, but Huemoeller said the dual was much closer than that.
“We had a couple of tiebreaks and faced a lot of adversity in that match,” he said. “There were a lot of places we could have lost, but they proved to me that they were up to the task and pulled through.”
The Blugolds swept their MVC competition in dual meets this season and won the conference meet and overall championship with a good performance at Green Island this week for some momentum into a subsectional that begins at 9 a.m. and includes conference teams plus Reedsburg.
Qualifiers from this subsectional will combine with another that contains DeForest, Madison West, Sun Prairie West — all teams Aquinas beat in duals — among others at the Nielsen Tennis Center in Madison on Wednesday.
Nelson (25-1), McGovern (21-4) and Willenbring (22-2) and sophomore Alivia Ritter (24-1) have produced amazing seasons in singles flights, and the doubles teams of Hadley Alderson and Hannah Miller (No. 1), Lyla Conway and Ryann Klar (No. 2) and Elly Binsfield and Elizabeth Hancock (No. 3) are capable of supplying important points in the bracketed format. The team with the most subsectional and sectional points qualifies for the team state tournament.
