It certainly doesn’t feel much like tennis weather this week.
Nevertheless, Park’s boys' team is scheduled to open the season in a little over a week, hosting St. Paul Johnson in the season opener on Thursday, April 4.
After a very mild winter with the courts open, getting practice time the last two weeks has been challenging, said longtime Park head coach Toby Townsend.
Park will have a veteran, senior-dominated team this spring, led by four returning seniors.
“Very senior-dominated, which is good,” said Townsend. “This is the year we’ve been waiting for. We’ve been very young the last few years.”
Senior captain Caleb Swigart is projected to get the call at No. 1 singles. Another senior captain, Noah Holmgren, along with classmates Josh Hess and Tom Lucas will all play either top singles or top doubles, depending on how things shake out. Another senior, Matt Peterson, will be somewhere in the middle of the lineup in either singles or doubles.
Junior Ethan Lo is a top and experienced doubles player returning and will likely be half of the top doubles team.
“Our lineup will be basically juniors and seniors, and then we’ll have a couple of youngsters that will be competing and that just goes to show you that we have some, not so much experience but just talent with our younger players that will be knocking the door,, very hungry, been playing tennis all summer long off season so we’ll have some competition this year for some of those bottom spots.” said Townsend.
The doubles team of Swigart and Lucas won twice in last year’s section meet before bowing out in the quarterfinals.
Hess mostly played at No. 2 singles last season.
Townsend said he’s optimistic for a successful Wolfpack season against the usually strong Suburban East Conference schedule.
“I think we can be in the top part of the conference,” Townsend send. “So, if we gel together and keep on improving every single match, just that continuous improvement, that’s kind of our staple of our team. We make huge strides just because of the way that we practice and the hard work that we put in so we’re always a completely different team from the start to the finish. And it’s probably like every sport. That’s huge where we can just have that progression of improving every single match, every practice and playing some pretty good tennis as sections start to come up.”
