With the graduation of seven superb senior tennis players from a year ago, coach Nate Bucher will be relying on some younger athletes as the Bulldog girls tennis team looks to stay atop the Mississippi 8 Conference.

“Our team has a lot of youth on it this year, so our strength will come from our adaptability and determination to improve everyday,” Bucher says. “Our main goal is to improve each day, through each individual stroke, not to focus on the outcomes, but on the improvement.”

Last season, Bucher’s team won the conference title before losing a close, COVID-affected match in the Section Semi-finals.This year, a conference title is not out of the question and if his young players show improvement all year, Bucher hopes for big things from his team.

“Chisago Lakes has a very strong team and it should be a battle with them, though it seems they are returning a few more positions than we are,” Bucher says. “We will obviously compete to try and be back to back conference champs and would love another shot at a State Tournament berth.”

While Bucher enters his eighth year as head coach with a young team overall, the cupboard certainly is not bare with six returning letter winners in Jazlyn Toedter (12), Maddie Moe (12), Faith Gott (12), Ayla Brown (11), Dani Nuest (11) and Julia Peterson (11). Toedter, Moe and Brown will serve as this year’s captains, while Bucher will have an experienced staff back to help him in sixth year coach Alyssa Stevens and fourth year coach Jen Anderson.

“Our captains have done a great job of stepping up to lead a young team and have continually encouraged and taught what it looks like to play Becker Tennis,” Bucher says. “As a coach, it’s one of the great pleasures of watching student athletes encourage and lead their peers.”

Bucher’s past teams have earned a reputation for being disciplined, athletic and battling for every point in their matches, and so far this year’s squad seems to be living up to that tradition.

“With our youth, we will be learning new insights in every match no matter what column the team ends up in,” Bucher says. “I think that is what will ready us to play our best come section tournament time.”

With the matches already starting this past week, both the coaches and players have been working hard to maximize their practice time in an effort to gain some early momentum in what turns out to be a relatively short season.

“Our practices have been really strong so far, and the girls are all willing to work hard,” Bucher says. “One of the main things is to teach the culture of our program and also encourage the style of how we practice like we compete.”

In other words, if practice performance is a predictor of success, the Bulldogs will once again be one of the top girls’ tennis teams in their class.