The RV-1A Aplington-Parkersburg boys tennis team will begin its season Thursday in a triangular with two teams from the Raccoon River Conference. The Falcons will join #10-1A Ballard for a triangular at #5-1A North Polk.
Head Coach Dave Price says it’s a meet all three head coaches are excited about.
“Ballard helped us out a few years ago when we were looking to add a meet because we had lost one,” Price says. “The same thing happened again this year. I reached out to their coach. He got back to me with a date in which they were playing North Polk. He had talked to their coach and it was their coach that said ‘Absolutely, we want Aplington-Parkersburg to come.’ They’ve got some real successful players at North Polk and I’d like to think that they saw some of our players and said ‘Yeah we want them to come down here,’ because I think there’s a great shot that hopefully we could meet again down the line.”
The Falcons will be led by senior Tate Neymeyer, a returning state qualifier who went 10-4 in the regular season at #1 singles. Senior Grant Wedeking will play #2 singles after going 10-2 last year while splitting matches between #2 and #3. Price says the rest of the singles and doubles spots will soon be solidified.
The Bombers are coming off a team appearance at last year’s state tournament. They’re 2-0, having defeated Indianola and Southeast Polk in a triangular last week.
The Comets are 1-0, having defeated Knoxville 8-1 in last week’s season opener. They’re led by senior Ethan Moon and sophomore Easton Moon, who finished third and fourth in last year’s state singles meet. There will likely be a rematch of last year’s state quarterfinal match between Ethan Moon and AP’s Tate Neymeyer, won 6-2, 6-0 by Moon.
Price says it’s going to be a challenging start to the season.
“Looking at just on paper, those are probably going to be two of the toughest teams that we’re going to play this year right next to Decorah. Waverly-Shell Rock, of course, is always tough as well as Columbus. So to start off with these two, I told the boys, we’re going to throw you into the ocean and you’re going to swim. And we know we’re not going to sink, but we know that we’re going to have some tough matches right away, which I think is good. We’ll be able to see where we need to improve. We’ll be able to at least have kind of a visual gauge of where some of these other teams are at, and give us kind of a visual gauge of where we need to be come late May.”
The triangular will begin at 1:00 p.m.
Interview with Price:
