The Becker boys tennis team had all of their doubles teams and both singles players advance to the individual Section 8AA finals following some great tennis played in Becker Monday and Tuesday.

 

The section semi-finals are Friday and Saturday in St. Cloud.  

 

Branden Roemer and Tyler Lindquist earned the #3-seed with a win over Alex Heltemes and Isaiah Strom of Big Lake, 6-1, 6-1 and a loss to Willmar’s Manuel Obregon and  Ryan Ackerman, 6-4, 4-6, 4-6. They will face the #2-seed from the north sub-section Eric Inderieden and  Kevin Heller of St. Cloud Tech.  

 

CJ Howard and Johnny Crocker earned the fourth seed by beating Jack Flicker and Zach Gibis of Big Lake,   6-3, 6-2 then losing to Willmar’s Hunter Fischer and Will Fischer, 4-6, 6-7 (5-7).  They will face Nick Portz and Nate Jordre of St. Cloud Tech, who are the #1 seeded team.

 

In singles, Jacob Lukkarila cruised through the subsection, winning the tournament and only dropping four games all day. He earned the #1-seed by beating Stefan Jones of Big Lake, 6-0, 6-0, then beating teammate Daniel Garcia, by the same score. In the third match, Lukkarila beat Peyton Fischer of Willmar, 6-3, 6-1 to advance to play #4-seeded Eric Minnerath of Sartell.

 

Becker’s Garcia had an amazing day, defeating Monticello’s #2-singles player, Cade Boraas by a 6-4, 6-4 score. He  then beat Willmar’s Spanish foreign exchange student, Pablo Bernabeu Guerra in an amazing,  6-7 (7-9), 6-1, 7-6 (8-6) match.  Unfortunately after battling Guerra for two hours, Garcia had to play Becker’s top player (Lukkarila) and lost. Shaking off the defeat, Garcia,  upset Big Lake’s #1 singles player — Spencer Mattson — who was seeded #3 in the tournament. The scores of that match were, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1.  

 

Garcia will play Spencer Konecue from Bemidji this weekend.

 

The Bulldogs will be participating in the Section 8AA semi-finals and finals this weekend in St. Cloud.  They will play Brainerd Friday at 10 a.m. at Apollo High School and if they win, they will play the winner of the St. Cloud Tech/Willmar match at 1:30 p.m. at Apollo.