Park girls tennis: Wolfpack’s season comes to a close at section tournament

The 2011 Park girls tennis season officially ended after a string of first-round losses at the individual sectional tournament in Lakeville on Friday, Oct. 21. Park tennis players fell to difficult opponents from Holy Angels, Sibley, and Simley high schools, but not for lack of effort, according to head coach Sean Kangrga.

Singles player Nina Riesselman lost 6-3 6-4 to Holy Angels. Riesselman’s improved groundstrokes made it a close match.

“She played more aggressive,” said Kangrga. “She moves the ball around a lot better. It gets her opponents moving around more.”

Andrea Kujz competed as Park’s second singles player against the number seven seed from Sibley High School. Although Kujz lost 6-0 6-0, Kangrga was proud to see her play hard throughout the match. Instead of focusing on the score, “Kujz plays every point the same way,” he said. “I like the way she goes about playing her matches. It wasn’t for the lack of effort.”

Park’s first doubles team Savanna Sielben and Nicole Laabs played against Simley High School’s number one doubles team. Simley won the match easily, “but [Park] played well,” said Kangrga. “They came a long way at the end of the season. They started volleying better. [They were] getting to the net more and getting to be aggressive with volleys.”

Sarah Luman and Marissa Walseth comprised Park’s second doubles team; they lost to Simley 6-4 6-4, but Kangrga was happy to see that they, too, played more aggressively.

“Sarah came a long way in getting to the net. She started doing that a little better,” he said.

Tough teams in the Suburban East Conference prevented Park from obtaining a single conference win this season, but the team is moving closer toward that goal.

“They improved a lot this year as far as competing. We had a lot closer matches this year,” said Kangrga, adding, “They had some good match experience playing the St. Paul teams. It’s good to have matches where we win pretty convincingly.”

Even though their season has come to a close, Kangrga hopes that his players will get in some practice time before the next season begins.

“The goal in the off-season is just to get them to hit the ball a little bit . . . hopefully not wait ‘til the summer or next season,” he said. “If it goes that way we’ll have repeat seasons.”

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