There is a burden that comes with being unbeatable: eventually, the victories stop being enough. Four state titles into a dynasty, the SPA boys tennis team has gone looking for opponents who can actually make them sweat.
Sophomore captain Winston Arvidson said, “Last year we had almost a perfect season through sections in state. We didn’t lose a single match, just 7-0, 7-0, 7-0, 7-0 the entire time.”
Junior captain Isaak Senaratna said, “In the end, it’s kind of like a breeze in state championships.” To challenge the team, the athletics department has scheduled matches with powerful AA teams such as Wayzata and Edina. “We’ve tried to play a lot of double-A teams who are really strong,” Senaratna said. “[Wayzata’s] nationally ranked, so we’ve never beat Wayzata overall, but it’s always good to be able to play teams that are that good and teams that can test us, because that’s how you get better.”
Sophomore Lucas Laguna played his first varsity season last year, where he gained experience playing against AA teams. “We lost. We just played Edina too, and we lost 7-0. Last year, I think it was 5-2. So we were a little stronger against them [last year]. Last year against Wayzata, we got swept one time, and we got beaten 1-6 one time. So both were pretty bad. They’re just very good,” he said.
These large schools are doing something right, and part of that is their large rosters with great depth. Just under four thousand students are enrolled at Wayzata, almost four times as many as at Saint Paul Academy.
Despite the fact that their teams are different from SPA’s – the schools have thousands of kids, and hundreds try out, leading to strong roster depth – we can learn from some of their strategies.
Laguna said, “I know they had this summer camp, and a lot of the kids on the team have been going to that summer camp since they were little kids. So they’ve been raised up to the team. So they have been developing really strong [talent] since early [on]… I think it would be a good idea [for SPA].”
Right now, the team is young. With just four juniors and seniors combined, the team has five sophomores, one ninth-grader, and one eighth-grader; it’s primed to succeed against AA teams in the coming years. A strong junior, Zahir Hassan, will return next year, and one of their captains, Winston Arvidson, is recovering from injury. “I think we’ll actually have a pretty good chance next year, even, because Zahir might play, Winston will be better, and all the sophomores will have another year, another season, to get better,” Laguna said.
The team is ready for their chance. “Yeah, I think we’ll win,” Arvidson said.
