St. Cloud Crush sophomore qualifies for state tennis

SARTELL – Paige Tarrolly, a sophomore on the St. Cloud Crush tennis team, is the individual singles champion of Section 8-2A and is heading to a state tournament for the third year in a row. Down a class, senior Amie Vanderweyst, of Foley won the Section 7-1A championship.

This is the first time Tarrolly (26-6) has made the state singles tournament. For the past two years she and Ella Marohl competed as a doubles team and last year the freshman-senior pair took sixth place. Seeding comes out later this week but tennisreporting.com ranks her fifth.

Tarrolly is a familiar name in prep tennis: over the past several years, older sisters Taylor, Katelyn and Ashley have, in turn, broken the St. Cloud Tech all-time wins record. Currently, 2021 graduate and St. Benedict tennis player Ashley Tarrolly holds the record with 172. Paige Tarrolly has competed for the Tigers, now the Crush, since she was a seventh grader and currently has 79 career wins, according to tennisreporting.com.

"She works on her game all the time," Crush coach Paul Bates said. "Those skills really pay off when you put in that extra time."

The first round of the individual state tournament starts at 8 a.m. on Oct. 26 at the Baseline Tennis Center on the University of Minnesota’s campus. The quarterfinals are later that day and the semifinal and championship rounds are Oct. 27.

This year the combined Tech, Apollo and Cathedral Crush (32-13) also had two teams in the individual doubles section tournament, with seniors Isabelle Anderson (23-8) and Abby Brown (28-5) winning the third-place match Saturday with a 6-2/6-1 two-set score versus a pair of seniors from Brainerd. They did not qualify for state and neither did the Crush team of junior Sadie McLean (18-13) and senior Emma Parries (13-11), which lost in the first round.

As a team, St. Cloud was swept by Section 8-2A team champion Brainerd (29-14) in the semifinal. Anderson and Brown said the team chemistry this season was the best they’d seen, adding it took hard work and a “family” feeling to grow into a section contender.

“A lot of times seasons are going to go the way those captains and older players run the group,” Bates said. "I couldn't be happier. I think it shows in the ending of the season because this group got really tight. That's a tricky situation when you're bringing three schools together plus you're bringing eighth graders through seniors."

Brown played singles all year and made the switch to doubles for postseason strategy, a move that can sometimes backfire.

Foley (34-12) competed as a team in the Section 7-1A tournament and won two rounds in a row versus Pierz (8-9) and Pequot Lakes (18-5) but lost in the championship 5-2 to Pine City (39-8).

“They played well, they bounced back a lot of them,” second-year coach Zach Kantor said. “There were several matches where they started down – even down a set and they didn’t stop one bit, it just energized them.”

Two Falcon doubles teams were the only winners Friday at Sta-Fit against the Dragons. They were the No. 1 team of senior Macy Zawacki and junior Anna Dahlstrom and the No. 3 team of senior Brianna Miller and sophomore Olivia Sauer.

Zawacki and Dahlstrom were seeded first in the individual-qualifying section doubles tournament held Monday and Tuesday. They won their first two matches handily and advanced to the semi finals, where they played the same Pine City Dragons doubles team that they had defeated in the team tournament. This time, seniors Malia Mikyska (29 - 4) and Brenna Youngbauer (28-5) broght their A game, defeating the Falcons 6-2/6-3. They would win the doubles tournament.

Foley's Miller and junior Adelyn Rudnitski (14-10) lost in the first round of the Section7-1A doubles tournament to Teagan Oslin (24-1) and Addy Axtell (20-2) of Mora (26-13).

Foley’s top singles players, Vanderweyst (20-7) and swenior Arianna Greenwaldt (17-7) qualified for the individual section tournament. Greenwaldt lost in the quarterfinal round to Crosby-Ironton's (32-13) Tori Oehrlein (24-1).

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Foley had seven seniors on the team this year. Kantor was emotional talking about what the team meant to him.

“The way that they wanted it and chased after it – our expression has been ‘What’s it worth?’” he said when asked what made the Falcons special. “How they took that personally and really stepped up to the challenge. Just their desire for it and how much they deserve it.”

Becker (33 - 17) and ROCORI (10-9) had doubles teams lose in the first round of the Section 8-2A tournament. Senior Kaitlin Reitmeier (10-15) and junior Megan Reitmeier (10-16) competed for the Spartans and and juniors Madison Bass (15-15) and Ali Groskreutz (15-15) played for the Bulldogs. ROCORI also had a senior, Autumn Kron (14-13), who lost in the first round in the singles tournament.

Becker was booted from the team tournament by St. Cloud in the quarterfinal round, the same round ROCORI was defeated by Annandale (15-4) by a score of 4-3. The Spartans had to beat Sartell-St. Stephen (19-24) in the first round and Annandale beat Sauk Rapids-Rice (6-28).

Contact reporter Reid Glenn at rglenn@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: St. Cloud Crush and Foley Falcons qualify for state